About 178,000 new cases will be diagnosed in 1997, and there will be an estimated 160,000 deaths.
Lung cancer is the largest single cause of cancer deaths in the United States.
It is responsible for one of every four cancer deaths in this country. One promising development in lung cancer is the drop in the number of new cases diagnosed each year in men. With sharp declines in male smoking, the number of new cases each year has fallen steadily since 1984. Lung cancer deaths among men dropped nearly 7 percent between 1991 and 1995. Among women, however, the number of new cases is still going up each year.