Ex Smokers Reduce the Risk of Lung Cancer - Quit Smoking Today

Further evidence that, from a health standpoint, it is never too late to quit cigarette smoking was presented by a New Jersey pathologist who found that in former smokers, the cells that line the bronchial tubes - where smoking-caused lung Cancers arise - recover from smoking-inflicted damage. The pathologist, Dr. Oscar Auerbach of the Veterans Administration Hospital in East Orange, said that "persons who have smoked cigarettes for many years some times express the opinion that the harm has already been done and that they might as well continue smoking. The evidence is completely contrary to that point of view," said Dr. Auerbach, who was a member of the research team that found the first evidence in experimental animals - beagles - that cigarette smoking causes lung Cancer. "cigarette smokers who give up the habit and quit smoking today thereby reduce their risk of acquiring lung Cancer," he added.

Earlier studies of the risk people face of developing lung Cancer have shown that even after as little as a year after stopping smoking, the risk of developing the disease declines, and after six to ten years, the former smoker's risk of lung cancer is nearly as low as that faced by people who had never smoked. Similarly, a decade after stopping smoking, the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease declines to the level of the nonsmokers. And obstructions in the small air passages in the lungs, which render smokers, especially susceptible to chronic bronchitis and emphysema, are also reversed after smoking has been stopped.

The new findings by Dr. Auerbach, are based on autopsy studies of bronchial tissue in 72 men who had been smokers for at least 10 years but who stopped smoking for at least five years before their deaths. The findings were compared with those in 72 men of the same age who smoked until death and 72 men who never smoked.

All 72 current cigarette smokers were found to have abnormal cells resembling cells that became cancerous in many microscopic sections of their bronchial tissue, Dr. Auerbach reported. But only half of the former smokers and a quarter of the nonsmokers had any sections with such abnormal cells. When former smokers were compared with current smokers who were as old as the former smokers were when they gave up cigarettes, Dr. Auerbach found that abnormalities in the bronchial tubes declined with time in those who stopped smoking. Not only was further damage stopped but the body was also able to repair the damage. It is therefore very important to start a quit smoking program as soon as possible.

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