How many people still die of lung cancer after quitting smoking by age [OC]

    by daysleeperrr

    13 Comments

    1. That’s truly a fascinating number. I’ve never smoked and I certainly don’t plan to start doing it, but this is really telling. Like I knew that smoking caused lung cancer, but it’s like not just a slight link, it’s truly damning of how smoking has been tolerated for far too long.

    2. So, even if you quit very early, your body still remembers and your lifespan is irreversibly shortened and your quality of life worsened…

      It makes sense but there are a lot of ex-smokers who think that just because they havent smoked in decades they are just as healthy as anyone else

    3. As a recent quitter, I found it useful to visualize this, as its something that is hard to grasp somehow. Do note some metrics differ per source, so I had to take the middle of the range sometimes. Its a rough estimate, which differs by geographic region, gender and smoking frequency among other factors.

      Sources used (through ChatGPT):

      https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2409903/

      https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8417597_The_cumulative_risk_of_lung_cancer_among_current_ex-_and_never-smokers_in_European_men

      https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/lung-cancer/survival#:~:text=Your%20outlook%20depends%20on%20the,More%20statistics

      Tool I used for the charting: https://www.draxlr.com/tools/bar-chart-generator/

      .

    4. 4 in 5 lifetime smokers never getting lung cancer seems way higher than I would have thought.

    5. Automationallthetime on

      Would be nice to show never smoked lung cancer rates next to these.

      Edit: I’m an idiot

    6. If you die at 33 from lung cancer and you are a smoker. Are you in the quit before 30 or never quit smoking?

    7. Is every group on the left hand side composed of 1000 people each?

      Would be interesting to see smoke frequency before quitting as well, to see the difference between 1 pack smokers vs 2 pack smokers for example

    8. The most fascinating aspect of this imo is the fact that even though the chances of getting lung cancer increase. The mortality rate still is the same throughout all of them, around 75%.

    9. WolfsmaulVibes on

      yeah i’m a passive smoker by heart, mom smoke during pregnancy, both parents, my older sister AND my grandma being smokers while growing up. i genuinely fear sometimes that i will end up developing lung cancer later in life.

      oh and my twin sister vapes too now, so i’ve got the chemical cocktail inside of me as well.

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