November is National
Lung Cancer Awareness
National Lung Cancer Awareness month is November, and it’s also the perfect time to see how far we’ve come in the fight against the number one cancer killer of men and women.
The good news is that according to American Cancer Society (ACS) data, more than 430,000 people alive today have been diagnosed with lung cancer at some point, and National Cancer Institute (NCI) reports show that lung cancer rates overall are down nationally and in Arizona. NCI trends show that the overall mortality (death) rate for lung cancer (lung and bronchus) rose steadily through the 1980s, peaked in the early 1990s, and has been slowly declining since 2001. In Arizona, according to the NCI, the annual lung cancer mortality rate is 38.5 deaths per 100,000, a decline of 2.7 percent over the five-year period from 2008 to 2012. The number of newly diagnosed cases in Arizona (lung cancer incidence) has remained stable over the same five-year period.