Medical report observes increase in lung cancer among women
Raphael Vassallo
The incidence of lung cancer among Maltese women appears to have increased significantly over the last decade, while the corresponding statistic for men has registered a slight decrease – although malignancies still remain more common among men than women.
These are among the conclusions of a medical study into bronchoscopies (lung testing) carried out in Malta over the past 10 years, authored by medical researchers Maria Agius, Stephanie Falzon, Josef Micallef, Alexia Meli and Stephen Montefort of Mater Dei’s Department of Medicine.
Ominously, the report also indicates that the rate of survival among lung cancer patients (both male and female) in the first year since diagnosis is only 30%, while the survival rates for other types of cancer (including prostate, which stands at 70%) is much higher. This makes lung cancer the deadliest form of cancer in Malta by far.
Echoing conventional scientific wisdom, the report singles out smoking as a leading cause of the killer disease, particularly as the apparent increase in lung cancer among women appears to correspond with an increase in female smokers in recent years.
“Trends in Maltese and other foreign populations indicate a substantial recent increment in the diagnosis of lung cancer in women,” the study notes. “This occurrence might be attributable to the increase in female smokers over the last decades.”
However, the same study – whose authors insist deals only with trends, as the number of cases observed is too small to draw any definitive statistical conclusions – also highlights an apparent discrepancy in this regard. While lung cancer cases have undeniably risen among women in the past 10 years, there was a slight decline in malignancies observed among female smokers over the same period.
Prof. Steven Montefort, the medical researcher who worked on the paper, acknowledges that this was an unexpected find.
“Overall, females tended to have an increase of lung cancer over the studied decade but to our surprise there was a subtle decrease in lung malignancies in female smokers, and an increase in female non-smokers,” he told MaltaToday. “This has been seen in other reports and is thought to be due to an increase susceptibility by females to environmental tobacco smoke [though in our report we did not have information about whether these females were indeed passive smokers]. Worldwide, in fact, whereas 85% of males with cancer were smokers, in females this figure stands at 47% and within Europe at 70%. But compared to male smokers there is clear increase in females with lung cancer over the decade.”
Apart from active and passive smoking, the report identifies other causes of malignant lung cancer, including exposure to radiation, carcinogens such as asbestos, inhaled industrial agents and genetic polymorphisms (a form of hereditary cell mutation).
The report, ‘Trends in Bronchoscopic Findings Over A Decade’, was published in the Malta Medical Journal (September 2009)
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