Illustrative Quotes of Subtheme 1b, How Long Does My Patient Have to Live?
| Respondent | Quote |
|---|---|
| Respondent 1 | I would say that my general approach to cancer screening across the board is to take into account life expectancy with a general rule of thumb of the benefits outweighing the risks of cancer screening if patients have roughly more than a 10-year life expectancy. |
| Respondent 5 | My perception of the time to benefit for lung cancer screening is like a year or 2. It’s like relatively quick. It’s more to sort of think of the like—would I be surprised if they died in a year–kind of question. Like if the answer is like no, that I wouldn’t be surprised, I might not bring [LCS] up. That’s what I guess is like who is like the denominator of all people who might be screened, but then the people who like actually get screened tend to be people who I perceive have a longer life expectancy, or at least a suitably long one or who have a ton of other issues, or mostly just people who have fewer like acute and chronic conditions to manage. |
| Respondent 6 | I have to think about what is their life expectancy, right? If their life expectancy isn’t more than 5 years, I’m not sure that I would choose another thing for them to consider at this point. |
| Respondent 14 | I think we all typically don’t necessarily screen or push screening as hard for patients who we think have less than a 10-year life expectancy. I think that would be sort of we’ll be able to use our clinical judgment for that. Even if they have significant comorbidities but I think they still have a life expectancy of more than 10 years, I would send [them] for screening regardless. I don’t think that I would—I think the key point there is life expectancy. Even if they have significant comorbidities but have a longer life expectancy. |
| Respondent 15 | How many years you would have to be expected to live before the lung cancer screening becomes beneficial. I have a sense of some of the other cancers, the cancer screening we do. Let’s say if somebody looked like they had other illnesses that would cause their life to be over in 5 years, 7 years, I would probably not be enthusiastic about screening. If somebody had significant heart failure, it wouldn’t be something that would be high on my list of things that I’ll offer. |
LCS = lung cancer screening.