Risk, From a Broader Perspective
A 55-year-old man who smokes is as likely to die in the next 10 years as a 65-year-old who has never smoked. A 35-year-old woman is twice as likely to die in an accident as she is to die of breast cancer in the next 10 years.
And after 75, heart disease is the biggest killer of smokers and nonsmokers alike, though lung cancer and respiratory disease remain huge risks for smokers.
New risk charts in a paper last month in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute provide a broader perspective than most of the risk calculators available on the Internet, because they cover the risks for 10 causes of death and for all causes combined, while differentiating by age and among smokers, nonsmokers and former smokers.
At first glance, it may appear that smokers and nonsmokers die of heart disease at the same rate, but they do not. A 35-year-old smoker is seven times as likely to die of heart disease as a nonsmoker the same age. But as smokers age and as some survive the more common smokers’ diseases, the numbers begin to converge. By 75, their rate of death from heart disease is almost, but still not quite, the same.
“Often, numbers are presented as lifetime statistics, which make the risk look too large, or as one-year statistics, which make the risk look too small,” said Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz, a co-author of the paper and an associate professor of medicine at Dartmouth. “These charts provide the information you need to understand a risk, and whether to consider taking some action to reduce it. How big is my risk? And how does this risk compare to others?”
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