Lung Cancer Facts and Statistics: What You Need to Know

Many people know someone who has had lung cancer. It’s a frightening cancer diagnosis because, although it is so common, it's also deadly. 

While there are multiple types, lung cancer as a whole was the second most diagnosed cancer in 2020. It was estimated that in 2022 there would be close to 237,000 new lung cancer cases. And about 6% of the U.S. population will be diagnosed with lung cancer at some point in their lives.

Thanks to successful anti-smoking campaigns, the rate of new lung cancer diagnoses has been falling on average 2.1% per year. Death rates also fell about 3.8% per year from 2010 to 2019.

This article will highlight important facts and statistics you should know about lung and bronchus cancer.

Lung Cancer Overview

Lung and bronchus cancer is a disease caused by an uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the lungs called a tumor. The tumor can impact your breathing, and the cancerous cells can spread to other tissues and organs. It’s one of the more deadly cancers and also one of the most common. 

Lung Cancer ICD-10 Code

The International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes can be found on your patient paperwork, such as the billing submitted to insurance. Each disease is given a specific ICD code. The 10th version of the code, the one currently in use, is known as ICD-10.

It can be helpful to know your ICD code for tracking your patient paperwork and making sure you get properly reimbursed.

Lung cancer ICD-10 codes can vary a little based on the specific characteristics of cancer. For example, the code “C34.91” refers to cancer of the right lung. The “C34” part should be the same for most kinds of lung cancer.

How Common Is Lung Cancer?

Lung cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosis in the United States. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimated there would be 236,740 new cases of lung cancer diagnosed in 2022. For men, it is the second most common kind of cancer (behind prostate cancer). Similarly, for women, only breast cancer is more common.

Approximately 1 in 16 people (6%) in the U.S. will be diagnosed with lung cancer at some point in their lives. In 2019, there were 576,924 people living with lung and bronchus cancer in the U.S.

It was predicted that about 130,180 people with lung cancer would die in 2022. Lung cancer makes up 12.3% of all new cancer cases but 21.4% of cancer deaths. Lung cancer kills more people than colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined each year. Lung cancer kills 350 people per day.

Lung Cancer by Ethnicity and Gender

Lung cancer closely reflects tobacco use trends. Lung and bronchus cancer is more common in men than women. About 1 in 15 men and 1 in 17 women will eventually develop lung cancer.

This gender dichotomy is strong in Black Americans. Black men have the highest lung cancer rates—about 8% are more likely to develop lung cancer than White men. Black women, on the other hand, are almost 9% less likely to develop lung cancer than White women.

Lung Cancer by Age

Cancer generally is more prevalent in older people than younger. This age-specificity is especially true for lung and bronchus cancer. Your risk of developing cancer due to smoking increases with how many pack-years a person has smoked. Most people diagnosed with lung cancer are over 65.

Pack-years are the number of years of smoking a pack a day. If you smoke half a pack a day for five years, you have 2.5 pack years. But if you smoke 1.5 packs a day for five years, that’s 7.5 pack-years. 

The longer a smoker lives, the longer they’ve likely smoked and the more pack years they’ve accumulated. Smoking was also more common decades ago. Cancers are just generally more common the older a patient gets. Cells accumulate more cancer-causing genetic mutations, and the body’s defense systems deteriorate.

Causes of Lung Cancer and Risk Factors

While most cancers don’t have one clear cause, there is an apparent reason why most people get lung cancer—tobacco use. About 81% of lung cancer deaths are due to smoking.

Causes of lung cancer include:

• Smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke
• Radon exposure (an odorless gas that can build up in basements)

Risk factors for lung cancer include:

• Chemical exposure (typically at work)
• Radiation exposure (typically through medical treatments)
• Other medical conditions, including various cancers
• Genetics, including a family history of lung cancer
  

What Are the Mortality Rates for Lung Cancer?

Devastatingly, lung cancer kills more people than any other type of cancer in the United States. For every 100,000 people in the United States, about 35 die from lung cancer each year.

In the United States, about 23% of people diagnosed with lung cancer have not died of it within five years of their diagnosis. That’s sometimes called the five-year relative survival. In other words, about 77% die from lung cancer within five years.

Many of those deaths occur relatively soon after diagnosis. More than half of people with lung cancer die within one year of diagnosis.

These rates are worse in men than women: 81% of men die within five years, and 73% of women do. Scientists aren’t sure why this is the case, but it might have to do with exposure to carcinogens during smoking, the effect of different hormones, or other factors.

Not surprisingly, younger people have an advantage when it comes to survival. In people under 45, survival rates are close to 39% (at five years). In people 45–74, five-year survival rates are about 24%–26%. For people 75 or older, this drops to 19%.

Survival rates also vary based on how much the cancer has spread in the body when you are diagnosed. For people whose cancer hasn’t left the lung, survival rates are higher. More than 50% might be alive five years after diagnosis.

People with non-small cell lung cancer tend to have slightly better rates of survival compared to those with small cell lung cancer. However, the amount of spread through the body is a much more important factor. For example, the following are some five-year rates of survival:

Unfortunately, lung cancer has often already spread quite a bit throughout the lung or even out to the rest of the body before it is diagnosed. That is partly why people with lung cancer often don’t do as well as people with many other kinds of cancer.

The survival rate in lung cancer has improved a bit. For instance, in 1975, only about 11% of people had survived their disease five years after diagnosis (compared to 23% today). There still is a long way to go.

Screening and Early Detection of Lung Cancer

Screenings for lung cancer are relatively new and are only relevant for people at high risk of lung cancer. Those who have a higher prevalence of developing the disease include people between 50 and 80 years old who meet both of the following criteria:

• A 20-pack year smoking history
• Current smokers or have quit in the past 15 years

Healthcare providers screen for lung cancer using an imaging technique called a computed tomography (CT) scan that uses a low dose of radiation to scan the lungs for signs of cancer.

People at high risk get scanned every year to look for new changes in the lungs. These changes in the lungs don’t always mean cancer. Studies found the vast majority (94% to 98.5%) of these nodules are not cancerous. These studies found screening can help detect cancer at an earlier stage, when it is more treatable.

The lives saved by finding these cancers early for the high-risk, older age groups with a higher prevalence of developing lung and bronchus cancer outweigh the negatives of false positives (finding something that turns out not to be cancer) and the potential dangers of radiation from screenings.

The National Lung Screening Trial found that lung cancer screening of 1,000 high-risk individuals can prevent five deaths, including three from lung cancer.

Summary

Lung cancer is a prevalent and very deadly disease. It was determined that in 2022 around 236,740 new cases of lung and bronchus cancer would be diagnosed, and about 130,180 people with lung cancer would die. More than 500,000 people live with lung and bronchus cancer in the  United States.

From 2010 to 2019, new lung cancer diagnoses dropped by 2.1% each year, and death rates decreased by 3.8% yearly.

The leading cause of lung cancer is tobacco smoking. This cancer is more common in men, especially Black men. New treatments, early detection, and anti-smoking campaigns have steadily improved both case numbers and death rates for lung cancer.