Deadly Facts about Lung Cancer

Every single year there are a large number of patients that lose their life because of the serious complications that most commonly arise when a person has acquired the deadly disease known as lung cancer. Sadly, there are also a countless number of individuals that receive a diagnosis of lung cancer each year. Below is a list of some very helpful information and facts about lung cancer.

• Smoking cigarettes is one of the biggest causes that individuals end up suffering from this disease. As a matter of fact, as much as 87% of all lung cancer patients are due to patients that have either previously smoked cigarettes, or they currently are addicted to this harmful habit.

• Every single year there are as many as 219,000 individuals that are diagnosed with this deadly disease just in the United States alone. Approximately 116,000 of these patients are men, and approximately 103,000 of them are women.

• Even after a person stops smoking cigarettes, they are still at a high risk of acquiring this type of disease for as long as 20 years after they have stopped.

• There are more patients that have never picked up the habit of smoking cigarettes that end up losing their life because of lung cancer, than patients that die from ovarian cancer, liver cancer, or AIDS.

• Out of all deaths that occur from a variety of different types of cancer, more than 28% of these deaths are caused from lung cancer.

• When you combine the total number of deaths that have occurred from diseases like prostate cancer, colon cancer, and breast cancer combined, there are more than 160,000 people that die each year from the complications of lung cancer, and this is higher than the above listed types of cancers combined.

• One of the sad facts about lung cancer is that approximately half of them occur in individuals that have already taken the steps to become smoke free.

• Out of all of the different races that make up our society, the specific race that suffers from the most cases of diagnosed lung cancer, and the most loss of life, it is the individuals that are of the African American race.

• It is unfortunate, but there is only about 16% of the individuals that are diagnosed with this type of disease, that receive a diagnosis before the disease has spread to other areas of the body, such as the regional lymph nodes and other areas.

• The leading cause of cases where individuals acquire the deadly disease of lung cancer occurs in individuals that have never had the habit of smoking cigarettes. The second leading cause of this type of serious disease is in individuals that have suffered from exposure to the harmful chemical known as Radon.

• After an individual has already been diagnosed with having lung cancer, there is as much as 84% of these patients that end up losing their life within the first 5 years.

• Other than smoking cigarettes that leads to many cases of lung cancer, other facts about lung cancer involve serious problems that often lead to the diagnosis of this disease that would include scarring that is caused from tuberculosis, second-hand-smoke, exposure to Radon that was caused from environmental or occupational exposure, and exposure to arsenic or organic chemicals, air pollution, asbestos, or radiation.