Cancer risk ‘lasts 10 years’

Press, 21 May 1979, Page 23

Cancer risk ‘lasts 10 years’

PA Dunedin The possibility of lung cancer developing in a person who has stopped smoking remains for 10 years, according to a Dunedin thoracic surgeon, Associate Professor John Borrie. In the latest issues of the "New Zealand Medical Journal,” Professor Borrie said that even if public opinion successfully outlawed smoking today the disease would continue t o appear at its high levels until the present cohort had passed on, a generation or more from now. Lung cancer continued to rise in women, he said. “The cause is smoking 20 or more cigarettes a day for 20 years. Even if one ceases smoking when aged 40 or more, the possibility of a lung cancer developing remains for another 10 years. “Lung cancer, masque-, raded in countless guises must always be considered a possible cause of disease among ailing smokers, 40 or more years old,” Professor Borrie said. The greatest medical

problem was recognising it early when still curaole. Even when detected, late palliative treatment, especially radiotherapy, could still relieve symptoms and allay suffering — both physical and mental. In the terminally ill, especially with young famillies, there was a place for hospital care, he said. “The more tragic side of lung cancer is the involvement of the compartively young and the reduction of the normal expected life span: in New Zealand in 1971, 291 men and 73 women died of lung cancer before the age of 65 years. “Smokers rarely realise that they not only cause their lung cancer themselves, but at the same time adversely effect their remaining lung function by the associated chronic bronchitis and emphysema,” Professor Borrie said.

A chest film every six months was the greatest value in detecting lung cancer in the high risk groups, (confirmed smokers over 40) he said.