Annual number of deaths expected to continue to decrease despite growth, aging of U.S. population
MONDAY, Nov. 5, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Existing tobacco control efforts will continue to reduce lung cancer mortality through 2065, according to a study published online Oct. 9 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Jihyoun Jeon, Ph.D., from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues used four simulation models of the natural history of lung cancer that relate temporal smoking patterns to lung cancer rates to project the effect of existing tobacco control efforts on lung cancer mortality from 2015 to 2065. The models used U.S. data on smoking from 1964 to 2015 and lung cancer mortality from 1969 to 2010 for adults aged 30 to 84 years.
The researchers found that with an assumption of continued decreases in smoking, age-adjusted lung cancer mortality was projected to decrease by 79 percent between 2015 and 2065. Despite the expected growth, aging, and longer life expectancy of the U.S. population, the annual number of lung cancer deaths was projected to decrease from 135,000 to 50,000 (63 percent reduction). However, through 2065, 4.4 million deaths from lung cancer are still projected to occur, with about 20 million adults continuing to smoke in 2065.
“Additional prevention and cessation efforts will be required to sustain and expand these gains to further reduce the lung cancer burden in the United States,” the authors write.
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