Smoking-Attributable Mortality Among Korean Adults: 1981-2003 / 한국역학회지

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: Cigarette smoking has been widely recognized as a major risk factor for lung cancer and other diseases in Western countries. In Korea, male cigarette smoking prevalence is among the world's highest and smoking has also become a strong risk factor for lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases. The objectives of the study were to calculate the smoking-attributable mortality in Korea and to predict future smoking-attributable mortality based on the observed data. METHODS: Number of smoking-attributable deaths were calculated by applying the percentages of population attributable risks (PARs) to the estimated number of deaths by diseases. In this study, PARs were obtained by using relative risks from Korean Cancer Prevention Study and population smoking prevalence. RESULTS: Among adult male, the smoking-attributable mortality (40,087) represents 30.75% of total 2003 mortality, whereas the smoking-attributable mortality (6,120) for adult females was 5.70%. Smoking was supposed to be responsible for 37.29% of all male cancer and 26.73% of all male cardiovascular diseases, whereas smoking for 4.68% of all female cancer and 5.93% of all female cardiovascular diseases in Korea. CONCLUSION: Smoking actually represents a remarkable burden of avoidable deaths in Korea. Smoking-attributable mortality appears to continue increasing in the last years.