Lung Cancer Epidemic

About one hundred years ago, cigarettes were homemade and were smoked only by a few rugged individuals. But the invention of the cigarette making machine in 1881 made them available to everyone. By 1981, one hundred years later, smokers were buying over 600 billion cigarettes a year. And as more of us smoked, more of us developed lung cancer.

Once a rare disease, lung cancer is now considerate an epidemic. In 1982 it was estimated to have killed 111,000 people. Unlike other forms to treatment, and only 10 percent of people live five years after a diagnosis of lung cancer. The surgeon General reported that 85 percent of those lung cancer deaths would not have happened if the people involved had never smoked. Lung cancer used to be a “man’s disease,” but women are catching up. “If present trends continue, (lung cancer) will be the leading cause of cancer in women” by the early 1900s.

The way an individual smokes influences his or her chances of developing lung cancer. The risk increases with the number of cigarettes smoked each day, how deeply the smoker inhales, and how high the tar and nicotine content of the cigarettes is. Smokers who started smoking early in their lives are also at greater risk those who have only smoked for a few years.

If a person stops smoking, will his or her chances of drying from lung cancer drop? Yes, but it takes ten to fifteen years for the smokers’ mortality rate to drop back to the nonsmokers’ rate. Giving up cigarettes reduces the risk of drying from lung cancer. The abnormal multiplication of cell (hyperplasia) that occurs in the early stages of lung cancer. Basal cells underlying the bronchial lining become irritated (by cigarette smoke, for example) and begin to increase in number. This is followed by loss of ciliated respiratory epithelial cells that function to keep harmful materials out of the lungs. The remaining cells then take a characteristic “squamous,” or scale-like, structure.