IBERIA PARISH — Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths in both Louisiana and the United States, but one New Iberia physician says early detection could dramatically change those outcomes — if more people got screened.
Dr. Moses Kitakule, pulmonologist, critical care specialist, and chief medical officer at Iberia Medical Center, has spent his career focused on lung health. During Lung Cancer Awareness Month, he’s using a new approach to spark conversations about a subject many people avoid: a superhero persona called “Captain Clean Air.”
“We needed to have something people can remember,” Kitakule said. “Kind of bring a lighter mood about it, because a lot of people are scared to talk about this. Some people are scared to know what’s going on.”
Kitakule says the most urgent message is simple: lung cancer screening saves lives.
Screening only became widely available about a decade ago, after national research showed a 20% reduction in lung cancer deaths in just three years when high-risk patients received annual low-dose CT scans. But Kitakule says the screenings are still vastly underused.
“Only about 15% of people who ought to be screened are getting it,” he said. “And yet we have the facilities right here in our community.”
The difference early detection makes is stark.
“When we find lung cancer early, the cure rate is almost 83%,” he said. “But when we find it at stage 4, the cure rate may be only about 8%.”
Kitakule says the two biggest barriers are awareness, as many people don’t know screening exists, and fear.
“A lot of people are scared to find out,” he said. “But the only way to cure lung cancer is to find it very early.”
He says many patients also misunderstand who qualifies. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends annual low-dose CT scans for adults 50 to 80 years old with a 20-year history of smoking a pack a day — who either still smoke or quit within the last 15 years — but only if they are healthy enough to undergo treatment if cancer is found.
“It has to be shared decision-making,” he said. “There’s also anxiety with being scanned every year, and sometimes we find cancers in people that would never have harmed them. So it’s important to choose the right candidate.”
Because the lungs have no pain fibers, most people feel nothing until the cancer has grown or spread.
“You can have a lung cancer as big as a watermelon in your chest and not have symptoms,” Kitakule said. “By the time lung cancer causes symptoms, it’s usually too late.”
He estimates that in his own practice, he finds a possible cancer on imaging “almost every week or two.”
About 90% of lung cancer cases are tied directly to smoking, while most of the remaining cases stem from environmental exposures, including secondhand smoke.
“The number one thing is to stop smoking,” Kitakule said. “Screening does not prevent lung cancer — avoiding smoking does. Screening just gives us the chance to catch it sooner.”
Kitakule hopes his new superhero alter ego helps break the stigma and fear around lung cancer discussions.
“The way we prevent lung cancer is through clean air,” he said. “If we can talk about clean air, smoking, and screening in a way people remember — that’s the goal.”
