Quitting smoking early gives you better chance of surviving lung cancer, Harvard study says
BOSTON - Quitting smoking early is associated with higher survival rates from lung cancer.
Researchers at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health looked at more than 5,000 patients being treated for the most common form of lung cancer.
They found that compared to never-smokers, those who still smoked had a 68-percent higher mortality, yet those who had quit before their cancer diagnosis had only a 26-percent higher mortality. That is, patients who never smoked had the best odds of survival but people who stopped smoking before their lung cancer diagnosis were significantly better off than current smokers.
And the longer patients went without smoking before diagnosis, the greater the survival benefit.
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