Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer: 2 in 3 patients with this form of cancer are diagnosed when they already have an advanced form of the disease and less than 1 in 10 survives it, five years after the processing. However, according to researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota (United States), these statistics can only improve when “former smokers” are part of the screening criteria.
These researchers, who have just carried out a study of 140,000 Americans aged 20 and over (study published in the medical journal Jama), explain that smokers who have quit smoking for many years fall through the cracks screening. To be eligible for this screening, you must have smoked 1 packet per day for 30 years, still be a smoker or have reduced your consumption over the past 15 years. “Former smokers who have been weaned for several years are therefore not screened. And when they end up developing lung cancer, it is discovered too late” explains Dr Ping Yang, epidemiologist at the Cancer Center of the Mayo Clinic .
Cancer stays dormant for 20 years
This alert from American researchers is supported by a study by the Cancer Research Institute of London which recently showed that lung cancer could stay asleep for over 20 years in former smokers before the cancer cells wake up and develop into an aggressive form of the disease.
“To gain ground on lung cancer, we should also screen people who have smoked less than 30 packs per year, or who have quit smoking for more than 15 years,” insists Dr. Yang. Detecting the disease before it has started to progress into an aggressive form would indeed greatly improve the survival rate.
Remember that in Europe, for the first time, the death rate by lung cancer in women is expected to exceed the number of deaths from breast cancer. On average, in 2015; 14.24 in 100,000 women are expected to die from lung cancer, compared with 14.22 deaths from breast cancer.
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