| "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Cigarette smokers who develop non-small-cell lung cancer, the most common type of lung cancer, have a less favorable outlook than do their counterparts who have never smoked, researchers report in the July issue of Chest." "The investigators found that not only is cigarette smoking the major cause of non-small-cell lung cancer, "but the more you have smoked, the worse your prognosis," co-author Dr. Robert James Cerfolio told Reuters Health " "Although more smokers are diagnosed with lung cancer than non-smokers, those who do not smoke can also develop this disease." "Cerfolio and Dr. Ayesha Bryant at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, note that the impact of smoking cigarettes on survival after lung cancer has been diagnosed is disputed." "To investigate further, the researchers studied data prospectively gathered over a 6-year period for 730 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer. Five hundred sixty-two subjects were smokers and 168 had never smoked. " "Never smokers were more likely to be younger, to be women and to be symptomatic at the time of presentation. " "The overall 5-year survival rate was significantly higher in non-smokers (64 percent) than it was in smokers (56 percent)." "Five-year cancer-specific survival was also better in non-smokers in different cancer stages. For stage I disease, 5-year survival was 75 percent versus 62 percent; for stage II, it was 53 percent versus 46 percent; and
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