A lung cancer screening program that’s been under way for two years at Butler Memorial Hospital had its biggest month ever this February, and medical professionals want it to continue its growth.

In February, the program screened 45 people, said Lori Archer, a registered nurse in the hospital’s Oncology Department who reviews the scans and corresponds with patients.

That’s by far the largest number of patients the program — which performed nearly 200 screenings between July 1, 2015 and Feb. 25 — has ever had in one month, Archer said.

She and Dr. George Davliakos, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Butler Memorial Hospital, credited the spike in screenings to the Affordable Care Act, which mandated that private insurance companies cover the screenings. That mandate took effect in July of last year, Archer said.

The program uses CAT scans, also known as low-dose CT scans, to find suspicious formations on patients’ lungs and start the process of determining whether or not they actually have cancer or not.

The screening program is targeted toward patients who are classified as “high risk” for being diagnosed with lung cancer, and must meet criteria to get into the program — including being between 55 and 80 years old, having smoked at least 30 pack years — a measurement calculated by multiplying the number of packs a person smokes per day by the number of years they have smoked — and are either currently smoking or quit within the last 15 years.

Patients who use home oxygen, have a known history of lung cancer or have certain medical implants like pacemakers do not qualify for the screenings.

Davliakos said the main way patients are referred to the program is through their primary care physician, but patients can also initiate the process themselves, if they believe they qualify and want to participate in the program.

Davliakos said the benefits of the early screening initiative are dramatic.

“The benefits are pretty clear. You’re reducing deaths by lung cancer by 20 percent. That’s pretty significant,” he said,

The screenings drive down mortality rates so dramatically by catching suspicious formations — called nodules — in the lungs early, which allows oncologists like Davliakos to treat lung cancer in its early stages, when survival rates are much higher.

Finding nodules on a patient’s lungs doesn’t immediately indicate he has lung cancer, Davliakos said, and the screenings by themselves don’t definitively diagnose lung cancer. But they do reveal whether nodules are benign or suspicious, and allow members of the hospital’s Lung Center to recommend patients for follow-up work like biopsies and repeat scans.

The survival rate for people diagnosed with stage one lung cancer is 60 to 80 percent, Davliakos said. If a person’s lung cancer isn’t spotted until stage three or four, survival rates drop into the 20 percent range, he said.

The dramatic differences in survival rates comes in part because of the way different stages of cancer must be treated.

Early stage cancers can often be surgically removed in their entirety. Later stage, more entrenched cancer has to be attacked via chemotherapy or radiation treatment — processes by which drugs or high-energy particles are used to damage cancer cells or slow their spread.

“That’s the point of these screenings: to pick them up while they’re still stage one,” Davliakos said.

Unfortunately that’s not how it’s worked out so far for the Lung Center, Davliakos said. Many of the patients they’ve diagnosed with lung cancer so far have been found to be in the later stages of the disease.

Between July 1 and Feb. 25, the program definitively diagnosed 15 people with various stages of lung cancer, Archer said.

Patients who are diagnosed with lung cancer have their cases discussed by the hospital’s Tumor Board, a weekly conference that includes specialists who work together to map out a patient’s treatment. That care is available at Butler Health System

By the numbers, lung cancer is one of the most prevalent and deadly forms of cancer in the United States.

In Pennsylvania, the rate of people diagnosed with lung cancer is nearly 64 in 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state’s death rate for lung cancer is nearly 47 in 100,000.

Archer said one of the main impediments for the program is patients’ fear of knowing definitively if they have lung cancer or not — something she said the center’s quick screenings are working to overcome.

“It’s so simple, takes very little time. You could be done with this in five minutes and it could change your life,” Archer said.