Tobacco consumption and lung cancer.

Abstract

In 1912, Adler asked in the introduction to his book Primary Malignant Growth of the Lungs and Bronchi, ‘Is it worthwhile to write a monograph on the subject of primary malignant lung tumors?’ He concluded, ‘There is nearly complete concensus of opinion that primary malignant neoplasms of the lungs are among the rarest forms of disease’ [1]. In the following 70 years, however, there was a dramatic increase of primary lung cancer throughout the world. By 1985, lung cancer was the most frequently occurring cancer worldwide, with an estimated 896,000 new cases accounting for 11.8% of all cancer cases [2]. Figures 1 and 2 present the increase of lung cancer incidence in men in eight developed countries, namely, the U.S.A., the United Kingdom, West Germany, and France, and Canada, Italy, Sweden, and Japan, respectively [3–14]. In the former U.S.S.R., lung cancer rose from about 31,400 reported cases in males and 8,800 in females in 1965 to 75,000 and 16,700, respectively, in 1984 [15]. In the U.S.A., lung cancer has been the leading cause of death from cancer in men since about 1960 and in women since about 1987 (figures 3 and 4).