Pack-year calculator
A pack-year is one pack a day for one year. It is the standard way clinicians quantify smoking history, and it decides eligibility for some screening programs - so knowing your number is genuinely useful.
Why this number exists
"How much did you smoke?" is a hard question to answer usefully - amounts change over decades. Pack-years compress the whole history into one comparable number: cigarettes per day, divided by 20, multiplied by years smoked. Ten cigarettes a day for twenty years and a pack a day for ten years are both 10 pack-years.
What it is used for
The US Preventive Services Task Force recommendation on lung cancer screening uses pack-years as an eligibility criterion, alongside age and how recently someone smoked. Whether screening is appropriate for you is exactly the kind of individual decision this site does not make - but walking into the appointment already knowing your pack-years turns a vague conversation into a specific one.
Questions worth taking with the number:
- Given my pack-years and my age, do I meet the current criteria for lung cancer screening?
- Is the screening covered by my plan as a preventive service?
- If I quit years ago, does that change whether screening applies to me?
Preventive services are frequently covered without cost sharing at in-network providers - our guide on how cost sharing works explains the mechanics, and it is always worth confirming coverage before booking.
Where this comes from
The USPSTF lung cancer screening recommendation: uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org.
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