Lung cancer is no longer just a 'smokers' disease', according to a leading doctor. There are so many that develop the disease without ever smoking a cigarette.
Dr Harpal Kumar said that while the number of smokers is falling, which is leading to an overall reduction in the number of that developing lung cancer, there are still a steady 6,000 people developing the disease who do not smoke.
Researchers said that women on their 20s and 30s have the highest risk of having lung cancer. Despite being the top reason for cancer deaths, lung cancer does not receive much funding for research compared to other type of cancer diseases.
According to reports, lung cancer deaths are higher than breast cancer, prostate or colon cancers or even combined.
Dr. Lecia Sequist, a medical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said that, "One of the big problems is there is such a big association in the public's mind between smoking and lung cancer." She added that, "No one deserves to get lung cancer. But we are seeing a lot of patients who never smoked or smoked years ago or only in small amounts. We just don't know why."
Based on data from the American Cancer Society, there are at least 108,000 women diagnosed with lung cancer each year, 72,000 die from it. The survival rate for a lung cancer patient is 16 percent.
According a National Cancer Institute study conducted from 1973 to 2008, the five-year survival rate for lung cancer is 16.3 percent-significantly lower than colon cancer (65.2 percent), breast cancer (90 percent), and prostate cancer (99 percent).
However, lung cancer research is also underfunded compared to these other cancers. According to a 2012 American Cancer Society study, lung cancer causes more deaths than the next three most fatal cancers-colon, cancer, and prostate-combined. However, it receives significantly less federal funding than the other three. Breast cancer alone received five times more federal funding than lung cancer in 2011, according to the Lung Cancer Foundation of America.
"We don't do this for everyone, with this many physicians," Whitney Greene, the service line administrator for the oncology department, said. "We did it for [Draft] because of his connection to Stanford and the 49ers, as well as his efforts to spread lung cancer awareness."
Although the prognosis for lung cancer patients is still grim, new technology and treatment techniques have surfaced in disease research. Stanford Hospital is currently collaborating with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, to devise the next line of linear accelerators machines to use in treating lung cancer.
Professor Charlie Swanton of Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute and University College London, who is leading the study, told The Telegraph: 'Success in treating lung cancer has been difficult to achieve but we're hoping to change that.'
The news comes shortly after it was revealed that even low level exposure to traffic fumes can increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer.
Research, published in the journal The Lancet Oncology, revealed that people's chance of developing the disease rises with greater exposure to small sooty particles generated by diesel exhausts.
"Maybe this campaign can extend a lung cancer patient's life for two years more," Draft said. "Some people think, oh, it's only two years. But when you put it in perspective of your mom, your kids; it's a different two years. Those two years are worth fighting for."
