Lucid Diagnostics Inc. and majority-owned subsidiary of PAVmed Inc. announced it has released positive data from a retrospective analysis demonstrating real-world clinical utility of EsoGuard®? Esophageal DNA testing for the detection of esophageal precancer in a large cohort of fire fighters. The study documents 100% concordance between clinically directed EsoGuard test results and subsequent medical decision-making by the prescribing physician.

It demonstrates that EsoGuard can efficiently test large populations at risk for esophageal precancer, allowing physicians to utilize EsoGuard results to appropriately triage those requiring confirmatory endoscopy in a manner broadly consistent with established, and recently updated, professional society guidelines. The manuscript, entitled Clinical Utility of EsoGuard®? as a Triage Test for Endoscopy to Identify Barrett's Esophagus in Fire Fighters, has been posted on the leading health sciences preprint server, medRxiv, pending peer review and publication.

The most direct measure of the clinical utility of any diagnostic test which returns a positive or negative result, as EsoGuard does, is whether the prescribing physician uses the binary test result to make the appropriate medical decision for the patient. Based on recently updated professional society guidelines, the appropriate decision following an EsoGuard result is clearcut. The prescribing physician referred all of the 28 fire fighters with positive EsoGuard results (7%) to a gastroenterologist for confirmatory endoscopy and referred none of the firefighters with negative EsoGuard results for endoscopy.

This represents 100% concordance between EsoGuard test results and additional physician medical decision-making. By providing the prescribing physician with binary EsoGuard results and enabling triage of only EsoGuard-positive patients to endoscopy, EsoGuard eliminated the need for hundreds of costly, invasive, and inconvenient endoscopy procedures, while remaining consistent with screening recommendations from professional society guidelines.