Advances in research mean that new treatments are coming along all the time and have helped to increase how long people with lung cancer live for.
How long an individual person will live depends on many things.
If the cancer is caught early enough it may be curable, and even if it is not curable, it is still treatable and many people live with lung cancer for several years.
Although smoking is the single greatest risk factor for cancer, not all people who develop lung cancer have smoked.
Exposure to second-hand smoke and other substances such as air pollution (including radon gas) increases the risk.
The number of people who have developed lung cancer and have not smoked varies in different studies, with the figures being 10% in one and 28% in a recent study.
Molecular testing may help to find out more about the type of lung cancer tumour you have and help decide which treatment is most likely to work for you (such as targeted therapies).
If you have NSCLC (non-small cell lung cancer), then molecular testing is most likely to be recommended. Sometimes there is a reason why molecular testing may not be suitable for you, so ask your physician to explain if this is the case.
The first signs of lung cancer are often a cough that does not go away and shortness of breath. If you have a long-term cough (that lasts for more than 3 weeks), get it checked out.
Lung cancer is more common in older people (in their 60s and 70s, but it can also occur in people at a much younger age and is diagnosed in people of all ages, e.g. carcinoid tumours can affect young people.