Researchers led by the American Cancer Society have found that current estimates for deaths related to smoking cigarettes are significantly lower than they should be.
This is mainly due to a number of health conditions that are not being counted as having been caused by smoking.
According to the Surgeon General, smoking kills around 480,000 people in the United States every year. However, researchers believe that this number may be tens of thousands higher because certain diseases have not been officially linked to smoking.
"If the same is true nationwide, then cigarette smoking may be killing about 60,000 more Americans each year than previously estimated, a number greater than the total number who die each year of influenza or liver disease," said Eric Jacobs, Ph.D., one of the authors of the study.
In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers detailed their work analyzing data from five U.S. cohort studies: the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study, the Women's Health Initiative, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, the Nurses' Health Study and the Cancer Prevention Study from the American Cancer Society. Research involved health information from almost a million men and women in the country, who were at least 55 years old.
The cohort studies approximately followed a 10-year follow-up period during which 181,377 deaths were recorded. Researchers also found that smokers were likelier to die by three times compared to their non-smoking counterparts, with diseases established to be related to smoking, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stroke, coronary heart disease and about 12 types of cancers, as the top causes of these deaths.
However, researchers also discovered that around 17 percent of deaths in smokers were caused by diseases that were not yet officially linked to smoking and, therefore, included in estimates for smoking-related deaths.
Smoking has been associated with at least causing double the risk of death from renal failure, hypertensive heart disease, intestinal ischemia, infections and other non-COPD respiratory diseases. When patients stopped smoking, their risks of death from these diseases also dropped.
Researchers noted that at least five of the diseases listed have strong evidence linking them to smoking despite not being included in the official list of health conditions that lead to deaths induced by smoking.
Based on the results of the study, the researchers concluded that a significant number of deaths among smokers are being caused by diseases not officially established as caused by tobacco use. Further research needs to be done to bolster their claim; however, once proven again, researchers are recommending that the list of diseases formally caused by smoking be expanded.
