Gender-Specific Differences of Lung Cancer

• Even when adjusted for body size, women's lungs are smaller than those of men, although their hemoglobin levels are lower.
• Residual volume and vital capacity is lower in females than in males.
• In 2003, lung cancer will claim more lives than breast, prostate and colon cancers combined.
• Men have a higher risk of squamous cell cancer. Women have a higher incidence of small cell lung cancer that spreads rapidly and has a poor prognosis.
• Women's cancers are more likely to be peripheral while men's are more central, hindering early detection in women compared with men.
• In 1987, lung cancer surpassed breast cancer as the chief malignancy killing American women (68,000 deaths in 2002).
• Between 1950 and 1995, the mortality rate from lung cancer increased by 500 percent among American females.
• Vulnerability of women to lung cancer is three times that of the same-aged male smokers.
• 20 to 30% of lung cancers occur in women who are nonsmokers.
• Women get lung cancer at younger ages, and are more likely to develop a more aggressive form of cancer than men.

Jewish Hospital Medical Center East Center for Gender-Specific Medicine program materials are sponsored in part by an educational grant from Eli Lilly and Company.

For more information on the Gender-Specific differences of lung cancer, please call the Center for Gender-Specific Medicine at (502) 259-6414.

Click here to view the pdf version of the Gender-Specific Differences of Lung Cancer poster.