Lung cancer is the second most frequently diagnosed cancer in both men and women (prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women are the most frequent).  However, it remains the leading cancer killer in the world.

In the U.S., approximately163,000 will die this year, more than the next three most-common cancers combined (breast, prostate and colon cancers).  Approximately one third of male cancer deaths and one quarter of female cancer deaths are secondary to lung cancer.

Because lung cancer is a relatively asymptomatic disease, efforts at early detection and treatment have not been highly successful.  As a result, the prognosis for most lung cancer patients remains poor. Just over 1 in 8 will be living 5 years after their diagnosis. 

Researchers are developing risk assessment tools, using age, sex, smoking history and exposure to environmental carcinogens, to help identify who should get screened.  Studies have proven that CAT scan screening permits diagnosis at earlier stages, and additional work is now being done to determine if mortality will be reduced by doing scans for those at risk.  Current guidelines do not recommend lung cancer screening for at-risk, asymptomatic individuals.

While non-smokers can get lung cancer, smoking remains its leading cause with greater than 85 percent of deaths linked to smoking.  Non-smoker lung cancer deaths are attributed to such things as occupational and environmental factors, other lung disease, and perhaps even to genetics. 

Warnings about smoking have been in the media for decades.  Although the rate of smoking has dropped by almost half since the Surgeon General's first report on smoking in 1964 (42 percent of adults were current smokers in 1965), progress has slowed over the last ten to fifteen years.  Concurrently, the lung cancer death rate in men peaked in 1984 and has slowly declined since. The number of smoking women actually increased in the 1990s, but rates have now started to drop.  The lung cancer incidence rate in women has recently leveled off.

The trends are promising, but much work remains to be done.  To date, the decline in lung cancer death rates have been mostly related to the decreasing use of cigarettes in men in the 1960s and 1970s.  While researchers are still working on new diagnostic and treatment technology, the single biggest factor for beating this disease lies in convincing more smokers to stop and those who have never smoked not to start.