The researchers found a 21 percent increase in deaths among suffers treated with both radiotherapy and surgery, compared to patients who had surgery alone. Far from saving lives, the treatment, intended to eliminate any malignant cells left after surgery to improve chances of survival, was killing some patients in the early stages of the disease. Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancers worldwide. It killed 1.1 million people in 1997 and more than 90 percent of the deaths were related to smoking. The disease has increased fourfold in women in the past 30 years and has overtaken breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer death in U.S. women.
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