Nearly 22,700 people died in 2022 from lung cancer, but while the number of men remained stable, the number of women continued to rise due to their later introduction to smoking, so that they rose by 5.4% with compared to 2021 and more than double (134%) than 20 years ago, reports Efe.
Thus, the most lethal tumor of all killed as many people last year in our country as those of the breast, prostate and colon combined, which makes it the fourth cause of global death in Spain and the first due to cancer, something that is worrying. a lot to the Spanish Lung Cancer Group (GECP).
“Mortality from lung cancer continues to advance in Spain, spurred by a greater impact among the female sex,” warned the head of epidemiology at the GECP and Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Alberto Ruano, after analyze the data from the latest INE statistics on ‘Deaths according to cause of death. Definitive 2022 and provisional for the first half of 2023’.
According to this report, 22,727 people died in 2022 from lung cancer, of which three quarters (16,760) were men.
But although women continue to be a minority, with 5,967 deaths, the number of those who died from this tumor has been increasing for years, so that in 2022 they increased by 5.4% compared to 2021 and 134% more than in the previous year. 2003, when just over 18,000 people lost their lives from this disease.
In this way, while lung cancer has experienced declines in men, overall it continues to be one of the neoplasms that has experienced the worst evolution in terms of mortality in the last five years in the European environment.
In women, the expected mortality rate and the number of deaths from lung cancer are significantly higher than those from breast cancer, explained Mariano Provencio, president of the GECP and head of Oncology at the Puerta de Hierro Hospital.
And although in our country lung cancer in women has not yet reached the impact of other European countries, that is precisely why “it is necessary to stop this advance.”
To this end, the GEPC urges measures to put a stop to tobacco, with more restrictive legislation than the current one, the improvement of its approach and diagnosis, and progress in its research as key elements to stop the mortality and impact of this neoplasia.
