Detroit holds record for highest lung cancer mortality rates

Compared with other cities, Detroit has one of the highest mortality rates in the United States for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Based on data from the National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program, researchers from the McLaren Regional Medical Center in Flint, Michigan and the Mayo Clinic, in Minneapolis, Minnesota studied cancer-specific survival between Detroit and other city registries by ethnicity.

According to this new research, presented at CHEST 2011, the 77th annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), they identified a total of 105,522 cases of small cell lung cancer and 3,094,764 cases of NSCLC. In all categories among ethnicities, Detroit showed lower survival rates than anywhere else in the United States.

The differences in mortality existing between registries could reflect differences in health-care access and the stage of the tumor at the time discovered.