does smoking really cause lung cancer?

[cumberland40]

does smoking really cause Lung cancer??? forget about other diseases that are being linked to smoking, let us just talk about lung cancer.

how come only 10 percent of all the people that has lung cancer smoke? what happen to other 90 percent?

[me5115]

The vast majority of Lung ca pts will be dead within a year, its a horrible disease and a horrible death....

[LydiaNN]

I've never had emphysema, but I've had bronchitis so I've had the experience of being racked with painful coughs and not wanting to breathe too deeply because it hurt so bad. I'm sure it's true and there are worse things that emphysema, but no one I know with that dx trivializes it.

[wtbcrna, MSN, DNP, CRNA]

I am not sure how anyone that is a nurse or in the medical community can doubt the countless amount of research that has been done that shows the numerous carcinogens are contained in cigarette smoke and that smoking can & does cause cancer.

"SMOKING AND LUNG CANCER RISK

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the world with an estimated 160,390 deaths in the United States alone in 2007 (1). Although the incidence of lung cancer in the United States appears to have increased by approximately 40,000 cases to 213,380 between 2006 and 2007, this apparent increase is actually artifactual and is the result of a one-time change in the formula used to calculate nationwide incidence. In fact, in the United States, death rates have plateaued in women and continue to decline in men, mirroring trends in smoking patterns over the past four decades.

Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, with approximately 10 to 15% of active smokers developing lung cancer. Several recent studies have examined the role of smoking patterns and host factors in modifying the risk of lung cancer in smokers. Lubin and colleagues developed a lung cancer risk model that demonstrates that risk does not increase in a linear fashion with the number of cigarettes smoked per day (2). Instead, the excess odds ratio per pack-year is increased in lower-intensity smokers (20 cigarettes/d). This finding supports other studies by this group, suggesting that the carcinogenic potential of the tobacco-specific nitrosamine 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) is reduced in individuals with higher exposure (3), as well as other studies demonstrating an inverse relationship between tobacco exposure and DNA repair capacity (4). Together with other data indicating that early age of smoking initiation is an important risk for lung cancer (5), these reports highlight the importance of public health policy efforts to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke and to prevent the initiation of cigarette smoking in children and young adults. Recent efforts to promote smoke-free environments have demonstrated promising efficacy in the attainment of these goals, as indicated by a reduction in salivary cotinine levels in New York City nonsmokers (6) and by a reduced likelihood of smoking initiation in individuals with low exposure to secondhand smoke outside of the home (7)."

Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2008 May 1;177(9):941-6.

[Atheos]

I've never had emphysema, but I've had bronchitis so I've had the experience of being racked with painful coughs and not wanting to breathe too deeply because it hurt so bad. I'm sure it's true and there are worse things that emphysema, but no one I know with that dx trivializes it.

Dying is never trivial. But people still smoke when they have emphysema.

[NurseLacy]

You can't expect to see a decline in cancer rates from the current reduction in smokers because that isnt the cause... i personally dont know no smoker (read: 0) that has lung cancer... still my grandma died beause of it, and she's been nonsmoker for life.

I dont need some study to tell me that is no isolated case.

Maybe you know some other cases ?

As a current medical oncology nurse and a previous radiation oncology nurse I know 1 of my many many lung cancer patients that was not a smoker.

I do not smoke. I do not smoke for many reasons, one being the risk of getting lung cancer. For thoes who do smoke, that is your choice. However, it is hard for me as an oncology nurse to feel sympathetic for each and every new tobacco related cancer patient I see that wishes they could go back in time and never start smoking. However, I treat each and every single patient of mine like I would want my family members treated, regardless of the decisions they have made.

For thoes of you who are "on the fence" about a correlation between tobacco use and lung cancer, please come to my office and argue your point with my patients who are living off O2 and just praying that when they go to sleep tonight, they wake in the morning. I have yet to have a patient blame their cancer on anything other than the choices they have made by using tobacco products.