An Overview of Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer of American women with about 38,600 deaths each year. Yet nearly half of these deaths could be prevented if women did not smoke. Cigarette smoking is the largest single, preventable cause of death and disability in this country.

Smoking accounts for nearly 75% percent of lung cancers among women in this country, and for about 10 percent of all cancer in women. Women who smoke one or more packs of cigarettes a day have a risk of dying from this cancer almost five times as great as a nonsmoker's. Since the chest X-ray as a routine screening procedure, and other tests do not detect lung cancer early enough, prevention is the best step to take.

Don't smoke. No cigarette is "safe," though switching to low tar and nicotine cigarettes may help if you can't quit yet--provided you don't smoke more of them. Quitting completely lowers your risk, over time, almost to that of nonsmokers as long as no irreversible disease is already present.

There are two major types of lung cancer: small cell and non-small cell. Each affects a different type of cell in the lung and grows and spreads in a different way, and so are treated differently. Non-small cell lung cancer can be further divided into three categories named for the type of cells found in the cancer: squamous cell carcinoma (also called epidermoid carcinoma), adenocarcinoma, and large cell carcinoma.

A diagnosis of lung cancer will also include the stage, or extent, of disease. Small cell lung cancer is described as limited, which means the cancer is confined to a portion of the chest, or extensive, which means the cancer has spread throughout or from the chest. Non-small cell lung cancer has four stages. In stage one the cancer is confined to the lung; in stages two and three the cancer is confined to the chest; and in stage four the cancer has spread from the chest.

Surgery is the treatment of choice for lung cancers that have not spread beyond the lung. When the disease has spread, treatment will often include radiation therapy and chemotherapy.

Source: Patient education material from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology was used as a source of information to develop the content for this topic.