Lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world. In 2022, roughly 2.5 million new cases were diagnosed globally, accounting for about 1 in 8 of all cancer diagnoses. It is also the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, responsible for approximately 1.8 million deaths that year, or 1 in 5 cancer deaths. In the United States alone, nearly 219,000 new lung cancers were reported in 2022.
How Lung Cancer Compares to Other Cancers
No other cancer kills more people. Lung cancer holds the top spot for both new diagnoses and deaths globally, ahead of breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers. In the United States, it is the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women. This outsized mortality is largely because lung cancer is often caught at an advanced stage, when treatment options are more limited and outcomes are worse.
Who Gets Lung Cancer
Lung cancer is overwhelmingly a disease of older adults. The average age at diagnosis is about 70, and very few people are diagnosed before age 45. That said, it does not exclusively affect smokers. Between 10% and 20% of lung cancers in the United States occur in people who have never smoked or smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime. That translates to roughly 20,000 to 40,000 cases per year among never-smokers.
Historically, men developed lung cancer at much higher rates than women, reflecting decades of higher smoking rates among men. That gap has narrowed dramatically. Among adults aged 50 to 54, women now develop lung cancer at a slightly higher rate than men: 38.5 per 100,000 compared to 36.8 per 100,000 during the 2015 to 2019 period. A generation earlier, women in that age group were diagnosed at only 73% the rate of men. In older age groups, men still have higher rates, but the difference continues to shrink.
Where Rates Are Highest
Lung cancer rates vary significantly by geography. The highest incidence and death rates for both sexes are found across most of Europe, North America, and Australia/New Zealand. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest rates. These patterns track closely with historical smoking prevalence, air pollution levels, and access to diagnostic imaging. Countries where smoking became widespread earlier tend to have higher lung cancer burdens today, even as smoking rates decline, because of the long lag between tobacco exposure and cancer development.
Survival Rates by Stage
How early lung cancer is found makes an enormous difference in outcomes. For non-small cell lung cancer, the most common type, the five-year survival rate is 67% when the cancer is still localized (confined to the lung). Once it has spread to nearby lymph nodes or structures, that drops to 40%. If it has spread to distant organs, the five-year survival rate is 12%.
Small cell lung cancer, a less common but more aggressive form, has lower survival rates across the board: 34% for localized disease, 20% for regional spread, and 4% for distant spread. These numbers are based on people diagnosed between 2012 and 2021, depending on the type, and reflect averages across large populations. Individual outcomes vary based on overall health, specific tumor characteristics, and treatment response.
Screening for Early Detection
Because survival improves so dramatically with earlier detection, screening is recommended for people at high risk. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends annual low-dose CT scans for adults aged 50 to 80 who have a 20 pack-year smoking history and either currently smoke or quit within the past 15 years. A pack-year equals smoking one pack per day for one year, so 20 pack-years could mean one pack daily for 20 years, or two packs daily for 10 years.
Screening stops once someone has been smoke-free for 15 years or has a health condition that would make treatment impractical. Despite the clear benefit of catching cancer early, uptake of lung cancer screening remains low. Many eligible people are unaware they qualify or have not been offered the test by a healthcare provider.
The Bigger Picture
Lung cancer incidence in the United States has been declining overall, driven largely by falling smoking rates over the past several decades. But the disease remains extraordinarily common and deadly. An estimated 125,000 Americans will die from lung cancer in 2026. The combination of high incidence, late-stage diagnosis in many cases, and aggressive biology makes lung cancer the single largest contributor to cancer mortality in the country and around the world.