Nov. 20, 2025, 5:16 PM ESTBy Marina Kopf and Maggie VespaIn 2024, Kara Goodwin started feeling a pain in her arm and shoulder that wouldn’t go away. She was diagnosed with bicep tendinitis and frozen shoulder. Doctors thought the resident of Brooklyn, New York, who has run multiple marathons, had an overuse injury from her active lifestyle. Two months later, when the pain hadn’t gone away, Goodwin got an MRI. “They could visibly see the giant tumor that was shattering my humerus bone from the inside out,” she said.Goodwin, now 39, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer that had spread to her bones. It was “quite shocking as a marathon runner,” she said. “I have no family history of cancer,” she added.Goodwin’s cancer, while treatable, can’t be cured. The treatments will keep the cancer at bay but eventually, she said, they’ll most likely stop working. Lung cancer is more curable when it’s found at an earlier stage, according to the American Lung Association. Kara Goodwin was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer after several months of arm pain. Evelyn Freja for NBC NewsFor Goodwin, it’s unlikely that would’ve happened: Lung cancer screening isn’t recommended for people her age, nor is it recommended for people who were never smokers. The current guidelines, from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, say that people ages 50 to 80 who smoked a pack a day for 20 years and still smoke or have quit in the past 15 years should get a yearly scan to screen for lung cancer. But up to 20% of lung cancer cases are diagnosed in people who never smoked or used any other form of tobacco, according to the American Cancer Society.A new study, published Thursday in JAMA Network Open, suggests that the guidelines are missing the majority of lung cancer cases.People still think of lung cancer as a disease that only affects older men and lifetime smokers, even though it’s becoming more common in younger women and people who never smoked, said lead study author Dr. Ankit Bharat, executive director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute in Chicago. “Every day, we are seeing patients who’ve never smoked, who may have had passive smoking exposure, they’re coming with advanced lung cancer, and then it’s not curable.”