Gender differences in lung cancer mortality analysed

Until the mid-1990s, epidemiological studies showed that, on average, male lung cancer patients in Austria died earlier than female patients. A recently published analysis by MedUni Vienna shows that the tide has turned: While the average age at death for men is continuously increasing, there has been no statistically significant improvement for women in recent decades. The researchers cite different developments in the smoking habits of the sexes as a possible explanation and advocate increased prevention in female adolescents. The study was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. Previous research demonstrated a continuous decline in the mean age at death of male lung cancer patients in Austria until the 1990s. At that time, affected men reached an age of just under 68 years, while women with lung cancer lived to an average age of almost 71 years at that time. Until the current publication by Richard Felsinger, Ursula Kunze and Ernest Groman from the Centre for Public Health at MedUni Vienna, it was not known how the average age at death of lung cancer patients in Austria had developed since then. The data analysis presents a contrary trend: For male lung cancer patients in Austria, there is a significant increase in the median age at death between the periods 1992-2001 . In contrast, there was no significant change in women with lung cancer during the periods described (70.43 and 70.66 years). The commencement of smoking at an early age is particularly harmful to women