Tips to keep safe FROM CANCER

Cases of lung cancer in women are about to overtake those in men, for the first time ever. Here's everything you need to know to help you avoid it or to catch it early

- TANYA PEAREY

Lung cancer is the UK's third most common cancer, and the biggest cancer killer. Around 48,500 people are diagnosed each year* and it causes nearly 35,000 deaths. It's more common as you get older - nearly half (45%) of people diagnosed are 75 or over. And until now, more men than women have been diagnosed but that's about to change, according to research by Cancer Research UK.

The charity predicts that there will be 27,332 cases in women and 27,172 in men this year - the first time ever that more women than men have been diagnosed. And that gap is set to widen. By 2038-40, an estimated 52.6% of lung cancer cases are predicted to be in females, with 47.4% in males. Experts believe the shift is down to historic smoking rates because smoking is the biggest risk factor for the disease, with some 90% of cases being in smokers or ex-smokers**.

'Rates of smoking peaked much earlier in males than females,' explains Alizée Froguel, the charity's prevention policy manager, 'so lung cancer incidence in males has started falling earlier than in females.'

The good news, of course, is that the number of lung cancer cases is falling overall, but it's still the number one cancer killer. 'In the UK, lung cancer takes more lives than any other type of cancer,' says Alice Hilborn from Cancer Research UK. 'There have been big improvements in how we treat other forms of the disease, but long-term lung cancer survival isn't much higher than it was 50 years ago.'