(Yicai) March 14 -- Lung cancer has surpassed breast cancer as the most frequent type of malignant tumor among Chinese women amid the aging population.

In 2022, China had 402,000 women with lung cancer and 357,000 people with breast cancer, according to the most recent report by the National Cancer Center. The nation recorded almost 1.1 million new lung cancers, making up 22 percent of all new cases of diseases linked to abnormal cell growth.

Some 733,000 people died of lung cancer in 2022, making up almost 29 percent of all cancer-related deaths, while lung cancer retained its position as the most deadly type of cancer within the whole population. Men accounted for more than 70 percent of the figure as men have a poorer chance of survival than women.

China has a lot of people who smoke so that might be the reason why lung cancer is so common and fatal, the NCC analyzed. In 2018, almost 27 percent of the population aged above 15 smoked, much higher than the global average of 19 percent in 2017. However, smoking data do not directly explain the wave of illness among Chinese women as 24 percent of deaths caused by lung cancer among men are linked to smoking whereas the corresponding ratio for women is less than 5 percent.

Since this century, China’s morbidity rate of malign tumors has remained stable among men but the rate for women has grown by 2.3 percent on average each year. The increase in such deaths could be explained by the aging population, per the NCC. China's healthcare system faces huge challenges in preventing and treating diseases of the increasingly large portion of retired people within the entire population.

Malignant tumors are responsible for nearly one-fourth of all deaths in China. China had over 4.8 million new cancer patients in 2022 and nearly 2.6 million deaths caused by cancer. Over 1.6 million men died of cancer whereas the corresponding number of women was 950,000.

Besides lung cancer, China's most common types of malignant tumors are those that appear in the colon, rectum, thyroid, liver, or breasts and the most deadly types are those that grow in the liver, stomach, colon, rectum, or esophagus.

Moreover, the report shows that thyroid cancer has become more common in recent years as people are becoming more aware of the need to screen for cancers, and their access to ultrasound scans and treatment is getting wider.

Editor: Emmi Laine