. Lung cancer: nearly 460,000 deaths expected between 2000 and 2014 in France

Lung cancer may be responsible for 459,287 deaths between 2000 and 2014 in France, 356,567 men and 102,720 women, according to a projection by the Institute of Health Surveillance (VS).

"Lung cancer is a concern for more and more significant for the medical community and those involved in public health policy," wrote Daniel Eilstein and colleagues InVS in this 105-page report released last Thursday on website of the organization.

To raise awareness and help health professionals and governments to anticipate the implementation of necessary to accommodate patients and better target prevention infrastructure, the authors wanted to estimate mortality from lung cancer in Metropolitan France in 2014.

They built models using data of deaths between 1975 and 1999 to obtain estimates of three periods, 2000-2004, 2005-2009 and 2010-2014.

Calculations indicate that in men, the number of predicted deaths for all three periods was respectively 110,229, 118,737 and 127,601, a rate of future mortality from lung cancer standardized on world population respectively 78.1 deaths per 100,000 , 77 and 75.7.

Death rates increase with age, with a maximum reached for 75-84 years, but remained relatively stable for the whole period of prediction.

Analysis by region shows that the increase in death rates over time will, as predicted, the highest in Aquitaine and Poitou-Charentes (17%) and lowest in Burgundy, in the center and Upper Normandy (1%). The largest decrease should be observed in Corsica (-15%), while the death rate should not move in Lorraine by 2014.

In women, the predicted rates are lower than men but follow a more significant increase. The number predicted for the three study periods death respectively 25,238, 33,240 and 44,242, a standardized mortality rate of 14.1 per 100,000, respectively, 17.7 and 22.5.

The death rate increases with age, but the maximum occurs later, between 85 and 89 years. An increase was observed in all regions with, the two extremes, 107% in Languedoc-Roussillon and 40% in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais.

These results confirm the trend in France to stabilize rates of death from lung cancer in men while increasing among women. This difference is "definitely" due to which tobacco consumption decreases in men and increasing in women.

Mortality from lung cancer standardized in 2010-2014 could exceed that breast cancer was 20 deaths per 100,000 in 2000, the report says. In countries where smoking among women was developed earlier in France, like the United States and the United Kingdom, mortality from lung cancer has reached or exceeded that of other cancers (breast, colorectal).

However, the authors acknowledge that the expectations of this study does not take into account some factors that would be interesting to integrate, such as smoking habits, exposure to radon or asbestos. They would interpret such differences in mortality rates between regions, between age groups or between different generations.

The prevalence and tobacco consumption, especially in the regions, are poorly understood. Reflection began between the Directorate General of Health (DGS), InVS, the French Agency for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT), Regional Health Observatories (ORS), which could join the National Institute of Cancer (Inca) - among others, to take stock of "all available data, the means and methods appropriate to the acquisition of these data and the construction of indicators of smoking exposure," indicate authors.

However, the results of this study allow them already concluded that "the most endangered population today consists of younger women" and it is from them that preventive action should be carried out first.