Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsHow Common?By Ethnicity and SexBy AgeCauses and Risk FactorsMortality RatesScreening
Table of ContentsView All
View All
Table of Contents
How Common?
By Ethnicity and Sex
By Age
Causes and Risk Factors
Mortality Rates
Screening
Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the United States, after breast cancer and prostate cancer.There are around 235,000 new cases of lung cancer annually and around 5.7% of the U.S. population will be diagnosed with the disease at some point in their lives.
Verywell / Ellen Lindner
How Common Is Lung Cancer?
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates there are around 235,000 new cases of lung cancer each year.Formales, it is the second most common kind of cancer (behind prostate cancer). Similarly, for females, only breast cancer is more common.
The NCI estimates an annual lung cancer death rate of around 125,000 people. Lung cancer makes up 11.7% of all new cancer cases but 20.4% of cancer deaths.Each year lung cancer kills more people than breast, pancreatic, and prostate cancers combined. Lung cancer kills 350 people per day.
What Is the Lifetime Risk of Lung Cancer?
Approximately 1 in 18 people (5.7%) in the U.S. will be diagnosed with lung cancer at some point in their lives. In 2021, there were 610,816 people living with lung and bronchus cancer in the U.S.
Lung cancer closely reflects tobacco use trends. Around 81% of lung cancer deaths are due to smoking.
Lung and bronchus cancer is more common in males than females. About 1 in 16 males and 1 in 17 females will eventually develop lung cancer.
This dichotomy is strong in Black Americans. Black males have the highest lung cancer rates—about 12% aremore likelyto develop lung cancer than White males. Black females, on the other hand, are almost 16%less likelyto develop lung cancer than White females.
Cancer is generally more prevalent in older people than younger. This age-specificity is especially true for lung and bronchus cancer. Your risk of developing cancer due to smoking increases with how manypack-yearsa person has smoked. Most people diagnosed with lung cancer are over 65.
Pack-years are the number of years of smoking a pack a day. If you smoke half a pack a day for five years, you have 2.5 pack years. But if you smoke 1.5 packs a day for five years, that’s 7.5 pack-years.
The longer a smoker lives, the longer they’ve likely smoked and the more pack years they’ve accumulated. Smoking was also more common decades ago. Cancers are just generally more common the older a patient gets. Cells accumulate more cancer-causing genetic mutations, and the body’s defense systems deteriorate.
While most cancers don’t have one clear cause, there is an apparent reason why most people get lung cancer—tobacco use. About 81% of lung cancer deaths are due to smoking.
Causes of lung cancerinclude:
Risk factors for lung cancer include:
How fast does lung cancer grow?Cancer does not always grow at the same rate, but research has found that, on average, it takes around 7 months for a non-small cell tumor to double in size.
How fast does lung cancer grow?
Cancer does not always grow at the same rate, but research has found that, on average, it takes around 7 months for a non-small cell tumor to double in size.
Lung cancer kills more people than any other type of cancer in the United States. For every 100,000 people in the United States, about 30 die from lung cancer each year.
What Are Survival Rates?
In the United States, about 26.7% of people diagnosed with lung cancer have not died of it within five years of their diagnosis.That’s sometimes called the five-year relative survival. In other words, about 73.3% die from lung cancer within five years.
Many of those deaths occur relatively soon after diagnosis. Less than half of people with lung cancer die within one year of diagnosis.
These rates are worse in males than females: 77.5% of males die within five years, and 69% of females do.Scientists aren’t sure why this is the case, but it might have to do with exposure to carcinogens during smoking, the effect of different hormones, or other factors.
When grouped into different ethnicities, the following are roughly the five-year survival rates:White: 26.7%Black: 23.9%Hispanic: 25.4%American Indian/Alaska Native: 22.4%Asian/Pacific Islander: 32.5%These differences might be due to many factors, like the availability of treatment and how often the cancer is found at a less advanced stage.
When grouped into different ethnicities, the following are roughly the five-year survival rates:
These differences might be due to many factors, like the availability of treatment and how often the cancer is found at a less advanced stage.
Not surprisingly, younger people have an advantage when it comes to survival. In people under 50, survival rates are 38.8% (at five years). In people 50 to 64, five-year survival rates are about 28.8%. For people 65 or older, this drops to 25.1%.
Survival rates also vary based on how much thecancer has spreadin the body when you are diagnosed. For people whose cancer hasn’t left the lung, survival rates are higher. More than 50% might be alive five years after diagnosis.
People with non-small cell lung cancer tend to have slightly better rates of survival compared to those with small cell lung cancer. However, the amount of spread through the body is a much more important factor. For example, the following are some five-year rates of survival:
Unfortunately, lung cancer has often already spread quite a bit throughout the lung or even out to the rest of the body before it is diagnosed.That is partly why people with lung cancer often don’t do as well as people with many other kinds of cancer.
The survival rate for lung cancer has improved a bit. For instance, in 1975, only about 11% of people had survived their disease five years after diagnosis.There still is a long way to go.
Screening and Early Detection
Screenings for lung cancerare relatively new and are only relevant for people at high risk of lung cancer. Those who have a higher prevalence of developing the disease include people between 50 and 80 years old who meet both of the following criteria:
Healthcare providers screen for lung cancer using an imaging technique called a computed tomography (CT) scan that uses a low dose of radiation to scan the lungs for signs of cancer.
People at high risk get scanned every year to look for new changes in the lungs. These changes in the lungs don’t always mean cancer. Studies found the vast majority (94%to 98.5%) of these nodules are not cancerous. These studies found screening can help detect cancer atan earlier stage, when it is more treatable.
The National Lung Screening Trial found that lung cancer screening of 1,000 high-risk individuals can prevent five deaths, including three from lung cancer.
Summary
Lung cancer is a common cancer that affects around 235,000 people a year. Although it is still considered a deadly cancer, the death rate has fallen significantly since its peak in the early 2000s.
There are around 600,000 people in America living with lung cancer. This cancer is more common in males, especially Black males. New treatments, early detection, and anti-smoking campaigns have steadily improved both case numbers and death rates for lung cancer.
20 Sources
Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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