Lung cancer is on quick rise in China

By the year 2025, China is expected to have one million lung cancer patients and one Chinese would die from the disease each minute, warned senior respiratory disease specialists.

Factors such as ageing, air pollution, and tobacco use are mainly to be blamed, said Liu Deruo, head of the thoracic surgery department of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital.

He made remarks at the launch of the chest surgery branch of the China International Exchange and Promotion Association for Medical and Health Care. He was named head of the branch.

"The branch aims to introduce the approach of precision medicine featured by big data analysis into the treatment of respiratory or chest diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer," he said.

Currently, the cure rate of China's lung cancer patients stands at 30 percent, far lower than the average of 70 percent in Western countries, according to Wang Chen, President of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital.

The late detection and treatment is mainly blamed for that, said Liu Deruo.

He urged members of the newly established branch to strive together for early detection and lower death rate of the disease.

Apart from experts from the chest surgery department, the branch also recruited members from others fields related such as respiratory medicine and oncology, he said.

"Such a multi-discipline approach for chest diseases treatment is important particularly as lung cancer is expected to be on the rise in at least 20 years in China," he said.

In recent years, clinical observations have found lung cancer began to hit the Chinese people at younger age.

The prevalence increased quickly among those aged 40 and older and usually peaked among those in their 70s.About 75 percent of the diagnosed patients are aged 45 to 65.

Also, the number of woman sufferers began to increase as well, mainly due to smoking, passive smoke, and exposure to kitchen smog.