DataLung cancer (all types)

Direct links plus the targets, companies, and technologies of this cancer's products.

• Is lung cancer one disease? No, and the ways of dividing it do not nest. Pathologists use the World Health Organization's classification of tumour types; oncologists use the split between small-cell and non-small-cell disease, because that decides the first fork of treatment; and within non-small-cell disease a set of driver mutations decides the second fork. This page is the family; the type pages carry the treatment. Mesothelioma, which grows from the lining around the lung rather than from the lung, is a different cancer and is not on this page.
• How common is it? It is the commonest cancer in the world and the commonest cause of cancer death, the only cancer that leads both lists: 2,637,005 new cases and 1,861,839 deaths a year (GLOBOCAN 2024). In the UK there are around 50,200 cases and 32,800 deaths a year, the 3rd commonest cancer and the commonest cause of cancer death (Cancer Research UK). In the United States 229,410 cases and 124,990 deaths are projected for 2026 (SEER).
• What proportion is caused by smoking? Cancer Research UK attributes 72 percent of UK cases to tobacco, 71 percent to active smoking and 1 percent to second-hand smoke, and about 86 percent of UK lung cancer deaths. Seventy-nine percent of UK cases are judged preventable altogether once workplace exposures, air pollution and radon are counted.
• Does stopping help once you have smoked for years? Yes, and the earlier the better. Of British men who smoke all their lives 15.9 percent die of lung cancer by 75; of those who stop by 60, 9.9 percent; by 50, 6 percent; by 40, 3 percent; by 30, 1.7 percent. In women the figures are 9.5 percent for lifelong smokers, 5.3 percent for stopping by 60 and 2.2 percent by 50 (Cancer Research UK).
• I have never smoked. Can I still get lung cancer? Yes. Fifteen percent of UK lung cancers are in people who have never smoked, which would make it the 8th commonest cancer in the UK on its own, and worldwide the figure is 15 to 25 percent (BJC Reports 2023; Health Science Reports 2026). It is usually adenocarcinoma, it is commoner in women, and it is more likely to carry a mutation a drug can target. Second-hand smoke accounts for an estimated 15 percent of never-smoker cases, radon and air pollution for more.
• Who is offered NHS lung screening, and what happens? In England, people aged 55 to 74 whose GP record shows they smoke or used to are invited to a lung health check, by phone, online or in person. The check asks about breathing, lifestyle and family history and measures height and weight; a risk model then decides whether a CT scan follows. Scans may be in a mobile unit in a car park or at a hospital, take a few minutes, and results arrive within four weeks. Anyone who still smokes is offered help to stop at the same appointment. The programme is being rolled out area by area, starting where lung cancer rates are highest, with full coverage expected in 2030 (NHS; Nature Medicine 2026).
• Does screening actually save lives? Yes, shown in randomised trials rather than inferred. Three annual low-dose CT scans cut lung cancer deaths by 20.0 percent in 53,454 Americans (National Lung Screening Trial 2011), and four rounds of volume CT cut them by 24 percent in Dutch and Belgian men at ten years (NELSON 2020). It takes 323 people screened over 6.5 years, or 130 over ten years, to prevent one lung cancer death.
• What are the harms of screening? In the National Lung Screening Trial 24.2 percent of CT screens were called positive and 96.4 percent of those were false alarms; false positives led to 17 invasive procedures per 1,000 people screened, with fewer than one major complication. Incidental findings turned up in 4.4 to 40.7 percent of people screened. Overdiagnosis, finding a cancer that would never have caused harm, has been estimated at anywhere from 0 to 67 percent, which is the least settled number in the field. NELSON's protocol, which measures nodule volume and growth rather than diameter, referred only 2.1 percent of participants, and modern nodule protocols are expected to reduce the false-positive burden.
• Why do I keep hearing the staging has changed? Because it has. The ninth edition of the TNM classification came into force on 1 January 2025. The T categories are unchanged; N2 was split into N2a (one mediastinal station) and N2b (several), M1c was split by the number of organ systems involved, and several stage groups moved as a result. A person staged in 2024 and a person staged in 2025 can carry different stage labels for the same disease, which matters when comparing survival figures.
• What is the outlook? Averages hide a wide range and are dominated by how late the disease is found. In the United States 29.5 percent of people are alive at five years, which rises to 65.5 percent for the 24 percent found while the cancer is still confined to the lung and falls to 10.5 percent for the 51 percent found after it has spread (SEER). In the UK 11.1 percent survive ten years or more, up from 3.3 percent in the 1970s, and survival is higher in women than men and falls steeply with age (Cancer Research UK). These figures predate the drugs and the screening programme now in use.
• Living with lung cancer, care and decisions: This is orientation from public patient pages and guidelines, not advice for your case: your own team's instructions and 24-hour number come first. The nine decision rows above, the question sets for the respiratory physician, thoracic surgeon, oncologist, genomics and palliative care appointments, the first 60 days checklist and the red cards were written from NICE NG122 and NG234 and the NHS, Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, Macmillan, Cancer Research UK, Asthma + Lung UK, Maggie's and Marie Curie patient pages, all read on 25 September 2026.
• On smoking and stigma. Lung cancer is the cancer people are most often asked whether they smoked, and the question reaches people who smoke, people who stopped decades ago and people who never smoked. Nothing in this record treats the diagnosis as a consequence. Stopping smoking appears here as a treatment recommendation with a named benefit, because NICE NG122 (1.3.1 and 1.3.2) says smoking increases the risk of lung complications after surgery and that people should be advised to stop as soon as the diagnosis is suspected and told why; the same section (1.3.3) says not to postpone surgery to allow people to stop, which means treatment is not conditional on it. Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation says quitting after a diagnosis may help you respond better to treatment and lists what is available. Nobody has to earn their treatment.

The same record for scripts and assistants; checked 2026-09-25. Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute “Data from OnCo (onco.cc)”.