Andre Braugher, the “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “Homicide: Life on the Street” actor who died Monday at 61, had been suffering from lung cancer, his publicist Jennifer Allen said.
Andre Braugher at CBS Radford Studios in 2018, in Los Angeles. Chris Pizzello/Invision via Associated Press, file
Here’s what to know about the illness, its symptoms, and how to give yourself the best chance of avoiding – or surviving – it.
WHAT IS LUNG CANCER, AND WHAT ARE ITS CAUSES AND RISK FACTORS?
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women, causing more deaths per year in the United States than colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined, according to the National Cancer Institute. The American Cancer Society estimates there will be about 238,000 new cases and 127,000 deaths this year.
In cancer, cells in the body mutate and grow abnormally, destroying other tissue.
The national survival rate for lung cancer jumped nearly five percentage points to 26.6% over the past five years, The Washington Post reported last month. But there are racial disparities: Black people had a 16 percent lower survival rate, and Latinos were 9 percent less likely to survive, than White individuals.
The disparity could be because of risk and protective behaviors, biology, access to care, and other structural factors, a paper published this year in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute said.
Smoking is the biggest risk factor for lung cancer; at least 80 percent of diagnoses in the United States annually occur in people who have smoked more than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Thomas John, deputy director of oncology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Melbourne, said smoking contributes to lung cancer partly because of chemicals inhaled by the smoker and partly because it inflicts repeated damage on the lungs, and cancerous cells are more likely to develop and spread during recurrent injury and healing attempts.
But rates among nonsmokers are increasing.
A growing body of research points to pollution as a factor, John said. “If you can smell pollution, it’s got particulate matter that’s large enough to stick in your lungs and cause lung cancer,” he said. A family history of lung cancer, and exposure to chemicals such as radon and asbestos, are also risk factors.
DID ANDRE BRAUGHER SMOKE?
According to a New York Times Magazine profile of Braugher in 2014, published when the actor was in his early 50s, Braugher used to smoke but stopped “years ago.”
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF LUNG CANCER?
Symptoms of lung cancer include shortness of breath, coughing and coughing up blood, chest pain, hoarseness, headaches, and losing weight without trying, according to the Mayo Clinic.
But a major reason lung cancer is so deadly is that someone who has it often won’t notice any symptoms until it is at an advanced stage, John said. And last year only 4.5% of eligible Americans were screened, according to the American Lung Association.
WHAT CAN PEOPLE DO TO AVOID LUNG CANCER?
Quitting smoking lowers one’s chances of developing lung cancer compared with continuing to smoke, although a smoker will still have a higher chance of developing the illness later in life than someone who has never smoked.
Undergoing screening, which involves a low-dose CT scan, is a good idea, John said. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts that assesses the effectiveness of preventive health care, recommends yearly lung cancer screening for people ages 50 to 80 who have smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years (or an equivalent amount over a different period) and either currently smoke or have quit within the past 15 years.
(New guidelines from the American Cancer Society are similar but recommend that people continue to get annual scans even if they stopped smoking more than 15 years ago.)
“We do know from some big studies that screening for lung cancer actually saves lives,” John said. “Picking up the disease early makes a massive difference.”
Kelly Kasulis Cho and Sabrina Malhi contributed to this report.
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