Lung & Bronchus Cancer Rates in the United States

Topic: Cancer Words: 468 Pages: 2

Data on Trends in Lung and Bronchus Cancer Rates

	American Indian / Alaska Native (includes Hispanic)	Asian / Pacific Islander (includes Hispanic)	Black (includes Hispanic)	Hispanic (any race)	White (includes Hispanic)
Year of diagnosis	Rate per 100,000	Rate per 100,000	Rate per 100,000	Rate per 100,000	Rate per 100,000
2000	45.7	41.8	77.8	34.2	68.8
2001	47.9	41	79	34.1	68.7
2002	44.6	40.4	75.8	34.1	68
2003	50	40.9	77.3	34.5	67.1
2004	51.7	40.5	75.1	35	65.8
2005	48.7	40.2	73.7	33.8	65.9
2006	46.4	39.8	73.4	32	65.8
2007	43.1	38.8	71.2	32.7	65.2
2008	45	38.5	70.8	32.2	63.9
2009	40.1	39	71.6	31.8	63.1
2010	42.4	37	67.8	30.3	60.4
2011	39.6	36.6	64.1	29.4	58.5
2012	36.6	36.7	64.3	28.2	57.5
2013	39.9	36.6	60.5	28.8	56.3
2014	32	34.4	61.3	26.8	55.4
2015	38.7	34.4	57.4	26	53.2
Mean	43.275	38.5125	70.06875	31.49375	62.725
Median	43.85	38.9	71.4	32.1	64.55
Mode	none	36.6	none	34.1	65.8
Variance	27.71933333	5.679833333	45.42895833	8.399291667	26.162
Standard Deviation	5.264915321	2.383240091	6.740100766	2.8981531148	5.114880253
Range	19.7	7.8	21.6	9	15.6

Table 1. Trends in lung and bronchus cancer controlled by a race.

Data Analysis and Interpretation

Lung and bronchus cancer rates in the United States continue to decrease but with significant differences in histology, gender, and race. The latter is the focus of the present data analysis (Meza, Meernik, Jeon, & Cote, 2015). As seen from Table 1, Black and White (including Hispanic) populations are the most affected by the condition, with an average prevalence of 70 and 62.7 cases per 100,000 people annually, respectively.

Native Americans (43.3 per 100,000), Asians (38.9), and Hispanics (31.5) rank third, fourth, and fifth (National Cancer Institute, 2018). Since the data is longitudinal as in gathered over an extended period of time, there is barely any rationale in assessing its normality. However, using one of the key assumptions of the normal curve, it is possible to make conclusions regarding the presence of outliers in each of the data sets. As shown in Table 1, the mean and the median in each column are not far apart. This means that the distribution does not have much skewness.

Regarding the issue analyzed, it is safe to assume that there were no drastic decreases or increases in lung and bronchus cancer rates in each race over the last fifteen years. Such values as variance, standard deviation, and range can shed light on the disease dynamics in each demographic cohort. The data set for Black populations have the largest variance, standard deviation, and range of all, meaning that some changes – negative or positive – took place. When comparing the data on the early 2000s and the most recent data, it is possible to point out some improvement in lung and bronchus cancer rates.

References

Meza, R., Meernik, C., Jeon, J., & Cote, M. L. (2015). Lung cancer incidence trends by gender, race and histology in the United States, 1973–2010. PloS one, 10(3), e0121323.

National Cancer Institute. (2018). Lung and bronchus cancer. Web.