Women at High Risk for Lung Cancer

While men are more likely to die from lung cancer than women, women are also at high risk for lung cancer, says a University of Michigan researcher.

If you add up the number of people in the United States who die of breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer and pancreatic cancer, the number of people who die of lung cancer is greater than all of those combined, says Dr. Gregory Kalemkerian, co-director of thoracic oncology at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Almost twice as many American women die from lung cancer every year than from breast cancer. I think that statistic says it all: Women are at high risk for developing lung cancer, particularly those women who smoke, and there is a greater risk of dying from lung cancer than from breast cancer.

Women with lung cancer, even when you adjust for the lower incidence, do somewhat better than men; that’s not true for many different types of cancer, according to Kalemkerian.

We don’t know why that is. It could be a hormonal effect that’s somewhat protective for women or a hormonal effect in men that’s somewhat more detrimental, says Kalemkerian.