Lung cancer how much longer to live

Use the menu to choose a different section to read in this guide. Types of Cancer. Medical Illustrations. Risk Factors and Prevention. Symptoms and Signs. Types of Treatment. About Clinical Trials. Latest Research. Coping with Treatment. Follow-Up Care. Questions to Ask the Health Care Team. Additional Resources. View All Pages. Several factors will affect how long someone lives after being diagnosed with lung cancer, including the overall health of the patient, the type of cancer, and whether the disease has spread elsewhere in the body.

More than , Americans are living with a lung cancer diagnosis currently. Unfortunately, the prognosis for many of these people is poor, as lung cancer is the leading killer among all cancers for Americans. Roughly , Americans die each year from lung cancer. Those numbers do not indicate a good survival rate for people diagnosed with lung cancer. When determining survival rate, medical researchers are calculating the percentage of people who would survive with a lung cancer diagnosis for a certain amount of time.

However, if someone has localized cancer, meaning it has not spread beyond the lungs, the five-year survival rates are A number of factors can cause your lung cancer survival rate to differ quite a bit from the average. The primary factor is how quickly you begin receiving treatment. Early diagnosis and treatment deliver a higher survival rate. Those diagnosed with cancer at a younger age may have a better survival rate than older patients.

However, younger people tend not to recognize symptoms of lung cancer as quickly as older people, so younger people may not receive a diagnosis as early, which drops the survival rate. People with other health problems, such as heart disease, may have a lower survival rate than healthier people.

Should the patient stop smoking immediately after the diagnosis of lung cancer, their survival rate may be better than someone who continues smoking. The same factor applies for exposure to toxic chemicals that may have caused the lung cancer to form. Among races, Caucasian or Asian people tend to have a better survival rate than African- Americans. Survival rates can give you an idea of what percentage of people with the same type and stage of cancer are still alive a certain amount of time usually 5 years after they were diagnosed.

These statistics can be confusing and may lead you to have more questions. Talk with your doctor about how these numbers may apply to you, as he or she is familiar with your situation. A relative survival rate compares people with the same type and stage of cancer to people in the overall population.