Madrid, Feb 12 (EFE).- The mortality of men due to lung cancer has decreased by 29% in Spain during the period of 20 years, but, on the contrary, that of women has doubled in the same period, and the main cause, by far, is smoking.
The mortality gap between both sexes due to this tumor, 90% caused by tobacco, has clearly narrowed in this time, according to data from the report “Mortality Patterns in Spain”, which has just been published by the Spanish Ministry of Health.
If in 2001 the male rate was 10 times higher than the female rate, in 2020 it was only 3.9 times higher, which can be explained. Women started smoking later than men in Spain and, as a consequence, have also started to quit later.
With the reference of the year 2020, the prevalence of tobacco use was 22.1% of the population (11.7% less than in 2014).
16.4% of women and 23.3% of men smoked daily, according to the latest European Health Survey in Spain.
“In men, tobacco use has been declining steadily since the 1980s, while in women the decline is more recent, since 2001, but the pace is much slower,” observes university professor Mónica Pérez. Ríos, coordinator of the tobacco group of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology (SEE).
For this reason, the decrease in men’s consumption is already reflected in a decrease in mortality, something that has not yet happened with women.
They continue to smoke more and the risk depends on the intensity and duration of the habit, but there is increasing evidence that “in women it causes greater harm.”
This is the case, even if you smoke less and for less time, due to its lower ability to eliminate the more than 200 carcinogens that tobacco contains, adds Dr. Javier de Castro, secretary of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM)..
MAY BECOME THE MOST DEADLY FEMALE TUMOR
Due to its high lethality, with a five-year survival rate of between 15 and 20%, the incidence and mortality present very similar figures in this type of cancer.
In 2020, 21,918 people died from this tumor in Spain, of which 16,615 (75%) were men. Of the 22,266 new cases that SEOM estimates will be diagnosed this year, 9,016 will be women, with which lung cancer remains the third most frequent in them, behind breast and colon cancer.
According to expert forecasts, the incidence in women, which is already three times that of 2001, continues to rise and, with it, mortality.
To the point that, in the next 2 or 3 years, lung cancer is expected to be the most lethal -although breast cancer will continue to be the most frequent- among Spanish women, as happened with North American women in 1987, alert the epidemiologist Pérez Ríos.
