Progress against lung cancer, Denmark, 2008-2022

There has been marked progress against lung cancer in Denmark. To gain further insight into the different aspects of the improvement, we examined the stage-specific incidence rates, stage-specific survival and mortality rates.

We used information from the Danish Lung Cancer Registry on date of diagnosis and clinical stage to calculate age-standardised incidence rates and patient survival by sex, period and stage. Information about age-standardised lung cancer-specific mortality rates by sex and period was extracted from The Danish Health Data Authority.

Firstly, the decrease in incidence rates was due to a reduction in the rates of advanced stages. Secondly, there was a gradual increase in survival across all stages, and thirdly, the mortality rates gradually decreased over time.

The improvements in survival and mortality from lung cancer were due to decreasing incidence rates of advanced cancer and improvement in survival at all stages of the disease.