How often can a blood test predict cancer risk? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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More and more blood tests to screen for cancer are coming on the market, with a new one looking at proteins in the blood helping identify who is at risk to develop lung cancer. Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins says if such a test could motivate people to utilize low dose CT to image their lungs that would be a good outcome, and he suspects more of this type of test are coming.

Nelson: I do think they're going to be risk tests and I think that may well be the game in lung cancer. There are some blood based DNA tests that are going to be coming down the pike, some of them being looked at by the FDA right now that have a high negative predictive value in the group that would otherwise be recommended for low dose CT scan imaging. And you can imagine a test like that if positive would be highly motivating for someone to go get screened and that's sort of the idea, you're at a higher risk.  :26

Nelson says if such tests also help people avoid more extensive and expensive screening tests that’s also good for our healthcare system. He points to fecal tests that help people to avoid colonoscopy as one such example. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.