Erin Camac, DO, ATSF, gauges the success of the annual Adult Pulmonary Clinical Core Curriculum sessions by looking back on their impact over the previous year.

“Last year’s sessions regarding respiratory infections resulted in high-yield points that I’m teaching every day on rounds,” said Dr. Camac, associate professor of medicine at The University of Kentucky College of Medicine, and program director for the Pulmonary Medicine and Critical Care Fellowship. Dr. Camac is the co-chair of the Adult Pulmonary Clinical Core Curriculum at the ATS 2025 International Conference, along with Josalyn L. Cho, MD, associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.

This year, International Conference attendees can attend two Core Curriculum sessions on adult pulmonary therapy, which will continue providing “curriculum you can trust,” according to the co-chairs. 

The first session is from 2:15 to 3:45 p.m. PT, Sunday, May 18, in the Moscone Center, Esplanade Ballroom (South Building, Upper Mezzanine), and focuses on screening and diagnosing lung cancer. Topics include:

• Best practices for lung cancer screening and prevention.
• Diagnosis and staging of lung cancer with endobronchial ultrasound.
• Image-guided bronchoscopy for peripheral pulmonary nodules.

An important aspect of this conversation, Dr. Camac noted, is the difference between the capabilities and the realities of screening and diagnosing lung cancer. She pointed to the United States and her home state of Kentucky as an interesting case study of the gap between possibility and participation.

“ATS attendees know that lung cancer is still the number one cause of cancer-related mortality, both in the United States and around the world, but many may not know how poorly we in the U.S. are doing at ensuring that screening for the deadliest cancer is appropriately done for our patients,” Dr. Camac said. “Despite low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) being recommended for high-risk patients since 2013, only 16 percent of eligible patients are screened every year. This leads to the deadliest cancer having only a 27 percent chance of being caught early, when treatments have the chance to save lives and lungs. My home state of Kentucky has some of the highest rates of lung cancer diagnoses in the nation, but some of the lowest rates of LDCT screening.”

The second session will be hosted in the same location from 2:15 to 3:45 p.m., Monday, May 19, building on the previous day’s knowledge by focusing on what clinicians can do with the results of screening and diagnosis. Topics include:

• Determining candidacy for lung cancer resection.
• What the general pulmonologist needs to know about molecular targets in lung cancer.
• Pleural procedures for diagnosis and management of malignant pleural disease.

“Keeping up with pulmonary medicine alone is hard enough, but pulmonary physicians bear an important responsibility to their patients to have enough familiarity with surgical and oncologic treatment guidelines to ensure that appropriate testing is obtained at time of diagnosis to guide treatment, and to ensure that patients can have their questions about these new doctors [the surgeons and oncologists they’ll be meeting soon] answered by the person they’ve trusted with their diagnostic process,” Dr. Camac said.

Dr. Camac and Dr. Cho added that because pulmonologists are part of a larger process when it comes to treating lung cancer, these sessions will discuss themes where multidisciplinary collaboration must live and thrive.

“If you attend every year, we’ll keep you up to speed with sessions designed to optimize learning of peer-reviewed information,” Dr. Camac said.

For a full schedule of conference events, visit ats2025.d365.events. To see more conference-related news and coverage of sessions and events, visit atsconferencenews.org.