Smoking harms you and your environment! That is well know, nevertheless you can see many people outside with a cigarette in their hand. The reason: The course of lung cancer is often unnoticed. This leads to a late diagnosis -- which leaves little time for doctors and patients to fight the disease. But there is hope: In future, a blood test may be able to give evidence if lung cancer is present or not.

Dr. Mark DeGuenther of Urology Centers of Alabama discusses the impact of cigarette smoking on bladder cancer.
Dr. Mark DeGuenther of Urology Centers of Alabama discusses the impact of cigarette smoking on bladder cancer.

Lung cancer is a malignant disease that occurs in the lung tissue. In most case, lung cancer is causes by cigarette smoking. Even some people who never smoked still get lung cancer, but statistics prove that about 90% of lung cancer patients were active smokers or former smokers.

The risk of developing lung cancer increases with the number of cigarettes smoked especially if the person starts to smoke at a young age. Lung cancer has always been more common in men, especially those over the age of 40, as more men used to smoke than women.