Before answering the question “what is the incidence of lung cancer?” it is helpful to define what incidence means. Incidence is described as the number of people who are diagnosed with a particular condition such as lung cancer over a particular period of time. This is different than prevalence, which means the number of people living with a particular condition at any point in time.
It is important to make this distinction because incidence is a measure of how commonly a cancer occurs. For example, with lung cancer, the incidence is very significant, especially among people who have smoked –- it is a common cancer. But if we were to look at the prevalence alone -- that is, the number of people living with lung cancer -- it may appear less common because the survival rate, and hence the number of survivors (prevalence), is lower.
The incidence of lung cancer in the United States in 2007 (the last year for which we have statistics available) was 65.6 out of 100,000 people. That means among every 100,000 people (smokers and non-smokers combined), roughly 65 would be diagnosed with the disease. For comparison, in the same year, the incidence of prostate cancer was 156.9 people per 100,000 and for breast cancer was 120.4 per 100,000.
The death rate in the same year was 50.7 out of 100,000 people with lung cancer, 23.5 per 100,000 people with prostate cancer, and 22.8 per 100,000 people with breast cancer.
The prevalence of lung cancer in 2007 was 371,000, meaning that 371,000 people were living with the disease. In contrast, and due to higher survival rates, the prevalence of breast cancer was 2,605,000 and the prevalence of prostate cancer was 2,276,000.
The incidence of lung cancer has been decreasing in men in the U.S. in recent years, and now appears to be stabilizing in women as well.
Further Reading:
Sources:
American Cancer Society. Cancer Prevalence: How Many People Have Cancer? Updated 10/07/10. http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/cancer-prevalence
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. United States Cancer Statistics. 1999-2007 Cancer Incidence and Mortality Data. Accessed 02/02/11. http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/uscs/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevntion. National Program of Cancer Registries. United States Cancer Statistics. 2007 Top Ten Cancers. Incidence Rates. Accessed 02/23/11. http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/uscs/toptencancers.aspx
