October 2006
www.cancer.org
November is National Lung Cancer Awareness month. More than 170,000 cases of lung cancer are diagnosed each year in the US, accounting for approximately 13% of all new cancer diagnoses. And deaths from lung cancer—approximately 160,000 annually—account for 28% of all cancer deaths. While lung cancer deaths have declined significantly among men since 1991, those for Caucasian and African-American women have continued to increase. Since 1987, more women have died from lung cancer annually than from breast cancer. One of the keys to success in reducing the number of these deaths for both sexes is
prevention. Tobacco use is believed to be the cause of 80% of lung cancer cases. Smoking cessation, or even better, never smoking at all, coupled with an awareness of risk factors and a knowledge of signs of the disease can help reduce the risk of developing this malignancy.
