Question by Rednas: Why does the US have so many lung cancer patients?
2/3 of Japan smokes but they have 81% less lung cancer patients but 1/4 of the US smokes and we have more lung cancer patients.
Best answer:
Answer by Spreedog
Very good question “Rednas.” You are not the first to wonder about this. http://lungcancer.about.com/od/causesoflungcance1/f/lungcaparadox.htm
Japanese cancer trends over the past several decades have become more and more like the USA as cultural differences and dietary choices become closer between these two developed nations.
Let’s look at some of the data worldwide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cigarette_consumption_per_capita
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_countries_by_number_of_cigarettes_smoked_per_adult_per_year.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_tobacco_consumption
From http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/l/lung_cancer/stats-country.htm
Lung cancer in USA vs Japan (SEER 2002 data USA)
USA 182,886 lung cancers diagnosed out of 293,655,405 population
0.06 % of the people had a lung cancer diagnosed in that early 2000s year
Japan 79,302 lung cancers diagnosed out of 127,333,002 people
0.06% of Japanese people were diagnosed with Lung cancer that year
Yet the data for many nations worldwide was extrapolated from U.S. trends.
We always have to examine how data is collected.
The U.S. is probably rated high in quality of cancer data collection,
and LA County may be an exemplary group of data managers / cancer registrars.
It would be very interesting to see what DeniseDDS has to say about this.
Where did you derive the data quoted in your question ?
What do you think? Answer below!