Find Cancer Early

Screening tests can help find cancer before symptoms appear. This is why getting regular cancer screening is so important.

American Cancer Society screening guidelines

Regular screening can often help find some cancers early, before they have a chance to spread and when treatment is more likely to be successful. Regular screening can also help find and remove certain pre-cancers before they have a chance to turn into cancer.

Knowing your personal and family medical history can help you understand your cancer risk and which screening recommendations are best for you. The lifestyle choices you make about diet, exercise, tobacco, and alcohol use (and other habits) can also affect your risk.

The most important thing to remember is to get screened regularly.

nurse preparing woman in hospital gown for mammogram

The American Cancer Society has screening recommendations for breast, cervical, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer. Learn more here.

Select your age to learn which cancer screening tests the American Cancer Society recommends.

Detailed screening info by cancer type

How to get screened

screenshot from the video "Lung Cancer Screening"

Find screening resources

If you don’t have a doctor, there are things you can do and places you can call to find out how to get the screening tests you need. Learn more here.

How much will cancer screening cost? Insurance coverage for cancer screening tests depends on the type of insurance you have. Use our helpful guide to learn more.

Multi-cancer detection (MCD) tests have the potential to find more than one type of cancer from a single sample of blood. Learn more here.

Know Your Cancer Risk
Take the ACS CancerRisk360™ assessment to learn more about what you can change to improve your health. By taking 5 minutes to answer a few questions, we will give you a personalized roadmap of actions with helpful resources you can use to lower your risk of cancer.

Take the Assessment

Learn about screening tests

Tests for breast cancer

Mammograms are low-dose x-rays that can help find breast cancer early.

A breast MRI can be used to look for breast cancer in women at high risk.

Tests for cervical cancer

Cervical cancer can usually be found early by having regular pelvic exams that include screening tests.

Tests for colorectal cancer

Options include take-home stool tests, procedures like colonoscopy, and blood tests.

Colonoscopy uses a flexible tube to look inside the colon and rectum.

Tests for lung cancer

LDCT scans can help find abnormal areas in the lungs that may be cancer.

Tests for prostate cancer

Prostate cancer can often be found early by testing for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels in your blood, or with a digital rectal exam (DRE).