Lung Cancer Facts
- Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States, accounting for approximately 29% of all cancer deaths.
- Approximately 50% of the people diagnosed with lung cancer have never smoked or are former smokers.
- While 87% of lung cancer cases are found in smokers and ex-smokers, less than 10% of those who smoke will ever get the disease.
- Lung cancer kills more Americans each year than breast, prostate, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers combined.
- During 2008, there were about 215,020 new cases of lung cancer (114,690 among men and 100,330 among women).
- Lung cancer kills 84% of newly diagnosed patients within five years. The survival rate is 49% for cases detected when the disease is localized to the lung, but only 16% of lung cancer patients are diagnosed that early.
- More than 7% of American men and women will be diagnosed with lung cancer in the course of their lifetime.
While lung cancer causes one in three cancer deaths, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) invested less than 5% of its $4.8 Billion budget in lung cancer research in 2007. The two other federal agencies with significant cancer research programs - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Defense (DOD) - have no money earmarked for lung cancer in 2007. Expressed in dollars per death, research funding through these three federal sources in 2007 totaled:
$23,754 for breast cancer
$11,959 for prostate cancer
$5,500 for colon cancer
Lung cancer research spending was $1,414 per death, a 23% drop from $1,829 in research funding per death in 2005.
