Mary E. Reid, MSPH, PhD distinguished professor of Oncology from Roswell Park Comprehensive Center joined us on AM Buffalo. You may remember she was on in the fall promoting Eddy, is a massive vehicle where you can get screenings done right in the vehicle.
Eddy has been out in the community and Dr. Reid is here to give us an update. She says they rolled Eddy out in the beginning of November when they were last here. Since then, they have done 175 screenings, mostly among firefighters. Dr. Reid says, “It’s been very successful. We are seeing a lot of healthy firefighters who get exposed on the job and you see a bit more stuff that needs to be followed up than we would expect.” She tells us that they see about 15% that need more surveillance, and she says in the population of them, most of them are not smokers. She says they’ve pick up coronary plaque so any heart disease that they may have developed over time and little lesions in their lungs. Dr. Reid say they are not cancer, but they need to follow them.
Emily says, “Prevention is key and catching things early, you said this last time and making it available to our firefighters early in is important.” Dr. Reid says, “The point with cancer, and it’s really across all the cancers you screen, if you catch it early, you survive. That’s why we do mammograms and colonoscopies, pap smears. With lung cancer it’s no different. We can change the course of this cancer by screening and that’s for firefighters, people who smoked for twenty years who are 50 years old.”
For more information go to RoswellPark.org/Eddy
