How this fits in

Chest X-ray (CXR) is the first-line test for lung cancer in many countries. Some referral guidelines recommend CXR for individuals who have particular symptoms, based on those symptoms’ positive predictive values for lung cancer. It is known that CXR does not identify lung cancer in around a fifth of cases, but the risk of different symptoms being predictive of lung cancer in the context of a negative CXR is not known. This study, which was based on a service that allowed patients to request a CXR if they had symptoms of lung cancer, suggests the risk of being diagnosed with the disease following a negative CXR is very low, except in patients with haemoptysis.