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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2004;128:346-351
© 2004 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Editorial

Gender differences in lung cancer: Have we really come a long way, baby?

^a Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge, Ill, USA
^b Division of Thoracic Surgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Mass

Received for publication May 18, 2004; accepted for publication May 24, 2004.

^* Address for reprints: Jemi Olak, MD, Lutheran General Hospital, 1875 Dempster St, Suite 145, Park Ridge, IL 60068

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

It has been estimated that 173,770 new lung cancers will be diagnosed in the USA in 2004, and 80,600 (46.3%) will be diagnosed in women. It has also been estimated that 68,510 women will die of lung cancer in 2004, which represents a 4.2% increase from 2001, when lung cancer took the lives of 65,606 women. Lung cancer currently accounts for 12.7% of all cancers diagnosed in the United States and for 28.5% of all cancer deaths.¹ In 1987, lung cancer surpassed breast cancer to become the leading cause of cancer death among women. In fact, lung cancer now kills more women annually than breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers combined. Unfortunately, women have come a long way, but not along a good path. Between 1950 and 1994, female lung cancer mortality increased 500%, from 3% to 22%.² In 1965, approximately 30,000 US women died of 10 categories of tobacco-related illnesses, but by 1985 that figure had risen to 106,000.³ That tobacco-related diseases including lung cancer are an increasingly major health problem for women is undeniable.

Smoking patterns in women and men

The lung cancer epidemic began later among women than among men, in large part because of differences in cigarette smoking patterns. Smoking prevalence among women was 18.1% in 1935, peaked at 33.3% in 1965, and stayed at that level through the late 1970s. Since that time, the rate has declined slowly to its current level of 23.5%.⁴ Unfortunately, women are beginning to smoke at a younger age, owing in large part to successful tobacco advertising campaigns directed toward both adolescents and women. The smoking rate among female high school students, for example, increased from 17.9% in 1991 to 23.5% in 1997 and had climbed to 27.7% by 2001.⁵ Because of the latency between exposure to tobacco and tobacco smoke carcinogens and the development of lung . . . [Full Text of this Article]