O3-12-4 - International Survey for Smoking Prevalence and Spontaneous Awareness of the Symptmos of Lung Cancer

Abstract

Purpose: This survey seeks to understand the smoking prevalence and spontaneous awareness of the signs and symptom across 21 countries by Global Lung Cancer Coalition.Method: National representative quota sample of respondents was interviewed between June and August 2013. The same two questions were asked of respondents to enable comparisons to be drawn.Results: Approaching one in four Japanese respondents are current smokers (24%). The gap in prevalence between men and women is particularly large in Japan as 38% of men say they are a current smoker compared to 10 % of women. General or unspecified coughing is comfortably the symptoms of lung cancer. Japanese people are most aware of (50%), and there is a 28 percentage point gap to the next most frequently recognized symptom (breathlessness, 22%), with a cough that does not go away closely following (21%).Conclusion: The varying degree of awareness of the symptoms shows that it will be difficult to raise awareness of them all. Instead it may be more effective to focus the commonly recognized symptoms in each country.