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Lung cancer: the invisible disease
I’m relatively new to the world of oncology. Finishing fellowship at Northwestern University in Chicago in 2007, I joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin Paul P. Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center in Madison, Wisc. shortly thereafter in the thoracic oncology group.
For my first blog I want to share some of the startling, and largely unrecognized, statistics related to lung cancer, which surprised me as I began to deepen my understanding of this disease.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon and Congress declared a war on cancer with the passage of the National Cancer Act. At that time, lung cancer was the leading cause of death in the United States with an overall five-year survival rate of 12%. Now 37 years later, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death and the second leading cause of death overall in the United States after heart disease.
In 2006, an estimated 162,460 Americans will die from lung cancer—more people than breast, prostate, liver, melanoma and renal cancers, combined. World-wide lung cancer will be diagnosed in nearly 1 million individuals and an estimated 850,000 will die. Lung cancer kills three times as many men as prostate cancer and nearly twice as many women as breast cancer—despite being less common. Prostate cancer has more than a 95% five-year survival rate and breast cancer has an 88% five-year survival rate.
Many find it easy to blame smokers for lung cancer and perhaps this is a defense mechanism to allow us to sleep better or defer patients and dollars away from research. The time for blame has passed. In 2007, 10% to 15% of new lung cancer patients never smoked, and 50% did as they were told and quit more than 10 years ago. Only about 10% of heavy-smokers ever get lung cancer.
There is much more to the story than smoking and we all should agree that nicotine is a highly addictive substance and can manipulate smokers into continuing to smoke. Many lung cancer patients feel stigmatized and they suffer embarrassment, indignity and inferior treatment as a result.
No one deserves to get lung cancer.
As this blog continues I envision using the space to talk about current issues relating to lung cancer and supportive oncology. I welcome your comments.