Lung Cancer Death Rates Declining in Europe and the United Kingdom

What is the current trend in the death rate of lung cancer in Europe? The overall death rate will fall in 2023, but there is a rise among women in France, Italy, and Spain.

Lung cancer being the most common cause of cancer death in the UK is projected to rise the average number of deaths from lung cancer in the UK every year will from around 36,800 deaths in 2023-2025 to around 41,500 deaths in 2038-2040, according to new research published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology.

Lung cancer mortality rates are projected to fall by 9% in the UK between 2023-2025 and 2038-2040, to 48 deaths per 100,000 people on average each year by 2038-2040.The rate of fall may differ between dmales and females.

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Lung cancer is a malignant tumor in the lung tissues. Smoking is the main cause of lung cancer with symptoms like recurrent respiratory diseases.

Researchers estimate there will be a 6.5% fall in cancer death rates in men and a 3.7% fall in women between 2018 and 2023. They predict that death rates from the ten most common cancers will continue to fall in most European countries in 2023, although the number of people dying will go up due to aging populations.

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A greater proportion of elderly people in the population means there is a greater number at the age where they are more likely to develop and die from cancer. Compared to a peak in cancer death rates in 1988, the researchers calculate that nearly 5.9 million deaths will have been avoided in the 35 years between 1989 and 2023 in the EU. In the UK, 1.24 million deaths will have been avoided.

More smokers quitting contribute to these favorable trends. In addition, greater efforts need to be made to control the growing epidemic of overweight, obesity and diabetes, alcohol consumption, and infections, together with improvements in screening, early diagnosis, and treatments.

The advances in tobacco control are reflected in the favorable lung cancer trends but more could be done in this respect, particularly among women, as lung cancer death rates continue to rise among them. No deaths from lung cancer have been avoided in women, both in the EU and the UK, during the period between 1989 and 2023.

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Researchers analyzed cancer death rates in the EU 27 Member States as a whole and separately in the UK. They also looked at the five most populous EU countries (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain) and, individually, for the stomach, intestines, pancreas, lung, breast, uterus (including the cervix), ovary, prostate, bladder and leukemias for men and women.

They collected data on deaths from the World Health Organization and Eurostat databases from 1970 to 2018 for most of the EU-27 and the UK. This is the thirteenth consecutive year the researchers have published these predictions.

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In the EU-27 countries, the researchers predict that will be an age-standardized rate (ASR) of 123.8 deaths per 100,000 men by the end of 2023. In women, the age-standardized death rate will be 79.3 per 100,000. In the UK, the death rates will be 106.5 and 83.5 per 100,000 for men and women, respectively.

Death Rates from Lung Cancer Will Fall Overall in the EU And UK

Cancer death rates will fall for all cancers in men in the EU-27 and the UK. They will also fall for women in the UK. Among EU women, death rates will rise by 3.4% to nearly six per 100,000 for pancreatic cancer, and to just over 1% to 13.6 per 100,00 for lung cancer.

Although there will be a 13.8% drop in lung cancer death rates among women in the UK, the death rate of 16.2 per 100,000 is still higher than among EU women because more UK women started smoking earlier than those in the EU. Lung cancer now kills more women in the UK than breast cancer, which has a death rate of 13.5 per 100,000.

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Cancer occurs more commonly in men than women for reasons that are still not clear to researchers.

Among women in different age groups, the researchers found a decrease in predicted death rates from lung cancer among those aged 25 to 64, but an increase in those aged 65 to over 75 years, and consequently an increase overall.

This is because women now aged 45 to 65, born in the 1960s and 1970s, have smoked less and stopped earlier than those born in the 1950s, who were in their twenties in the 1970s when smoking among young women was most prevalent.

Organized screening programs using low-dose computed tomography (CT scans) could reduce deaths from lung cancer by up to 20%. However, there are no such organized programs in Europe, and it is too early to evaluate the impact of screening in the UK, following the Lung Cancer Screening trial

Researchers also highlight the role that overweight and obesity play in cancers such as post-menopausal breast, endometrial (womb) cancer, stomach, and colorectal cancer. Although death rates from stomach cancer are falling overall, mainly because of improved methods of food preservation, healthier diets, and a decline in Helicobacter pylori infection.

Researchers caution that their estimates do not take into account the COVID pandemic, which occurred after the dates when data were available on cancer deaths. The COVID-19 pandemic may affect cancer mortality in 2023 as a result of delayed visits and procedures, influencing both secondary prevention and treatment, and disease management for cancer.

Source-Eurekalert