Page G P, Green J L, Lackland D
Department of Biometry and Epidemiology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston 29425, USA.
Semin Respir Crit Care Med. 2000;21(5):365-73. doi: 10.1055/s-2000-9403.
The twentieth century may be looked back upon as the century of lung cancer. At the beginning of the century lung cancer was quite rare, but this century the rates have increased approximately 10-fold and it is the second most common type of cancer and has become the leading cause of death due to cancer in the United States. The rate of lung cancer among U.S. women continues to rise, in contrast rates in U.S. men have been declining since about 1990. Cigarette smoking accounts for 85-90% of lung cancer deaths in the United States. However, only 10-15% of smokers eventually develop lung cancer. In the past 25 years, since the U.S. Surgeon General's ground breaking report in 1964, overall smoking rates have been declining, but smoking still remains a significant behavior. More troubling, the rates of smoking continue to increase in many parts of the world. Advances in molecular biology and early diagnosis have increased the understanding of lung cancer etiology and may be effective in uncovering more efficient detection and treatment regimens. These advances will hopefully make lung cancer as uncommon at the end of the twenty-first century, as it was at the beginning of the twentieth century.
二十世纪可能会被视为肺癌的世纪。在本世纪初，肺癌相当罕见，但在这个世纪，其发病率已增长了约10倍，它是第二大常见癌症类型，在美国已成为因癌症导致死亡的主要原因。美国女性的肺癌发病率持续上升，相比之下，美国男性的发病率自1990年左右以来一直在下降。在美国，85%至90%的肺癌死亡由吸烟所致。然而，只有10%至15%的吸烟者最终会患上肺癌。在过去25年里，自1964年美国卫生局局长发布具有开创性的报告以来，总体吸烟率一直在下降，但吸烟仍然是一种重要的行为。更令人担忧的是，世界许多地区的吸烟率仍在上升。分子生物学和早期诊断方面的进展增进了对肺癌病因的理解，可能有助于发现更有效的检测和治疗方案。这些进展有望使肺癌在二十一世纪末像在二十世纪初一样不常见。
