Smoking tobacco and lung cancer

March 20th, 2009, Author: admin, Categories: Fact about tobacco, Health effects of smoking, The effects of smoking

A malignant tumor in the lungs most often causes by many years of smoking cigarettes. Experts estimate that about 90 percent of all cases of lung cancer are caused by smoking. Other less common causes of lung cancer are asbestos exposure or exposure to other industrial toxins, tuberculosis, and metastatic cancer from other areas of the body, or a prior occurrence of lung cancer.
According to the authors of an annual report on cancer, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2003, the prevalence of smoking in 2001 was highest in Kentucky (30.9 percent) and was lowest in Utah (13.3 percent). The authors said, “Lung cancer deaths were lowest in Utah, the state with the lowest adult smoking prevalence, and highest in Kentucky, the state with the highest adult smoking prevalence.”
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease. In 2007, the American Cancer Society estimated that 91,930 men and 68,510 women would die of lung cancer in 207. African Americans with lung cancer have a higher death rate than whites, or 66.4 deaths per 100,000 African Americans compared with 56.7 deaths per 100,000 for whites, although the reason for this difference is unknown.
The American Cancer Society estimated that about 93,000 new cases of lung cancer in men and 81,000 new cases in women would be diagnosed in 2007. The survival rate after five years from the diagnosis of lung cancer is only about 14 percent.
Many patients are not diagnosed until they are already in the late stages of the disease.
Lung cancer is also the leading cause of cancer deaths in Canada. According to the National Cancer Institute of Canada, an estimated 18,800 people died of lung cancer in 2003, including 10,900 men and 7,900 women.
There are two main types of lung cancer: nonsmall cell lung cancer (which is the more common form) and small cell lung cancer. Small cell lung cancer is more dangerous and aggressive than nonsmall lung cancer.