NEW YORK: You`re a 45-year-old man who doesn`t smoke. What are your chances of dying in the next 10 years, and should you be more concerned about cancer than other diseases?
A new chart may help you calculate your odds, and, perhaps, put you at ease. It was developed by researchers who believe that death figures from cancer — 180,000 lives a year lost to lung cancer, for example — get lost in context, especially when compared with other ailments.
So, if you`re that 45-year-old nonsmoking man, the chart places your odds this way: Seven in 1,000 that you`ll die of a heart attack, one in 1,000 that you`ll die of a stroke, one in 1,000 that you`ll die of lung cancer, one in 1,000 that you`ll die of colon cancer, one in 1,000 that you`ll die of pneumonia, one in 1,000 that you`ll die of AIDS, and five in 1,000 that an accident will kill you. In all, the odds that you`ll die in the next decade are 39 in 1,000.

You`re a 45-year-old woman who does smoke. The chance that you`ll die of a heart attack in the next 10 years is six in 1,000. It`s four in 1,000 for a stroke, 10 in 1,000 for lung cancer, four in 1,000 for breast cancer, one in 1,000 for colon cancer, one in 1,000 for ovarian cancer, one in 1,000 for cervical cancer, one in 1,000 for AIDS, one in 1,000 for pneumonia, and two in 1,000 for accidental death. In all, the odds that you`ll die in the next decade are 50 in 1,000.

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Those numbers, collected and collated by three scholars at Dartmouth Medical School, come from a set of tables appearing in Wednesday`s issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The tables run from age 20 to age 90, and lists decade-by-decade risks for three cancers in men (lung, colon, prostate), five cancers in women (lung, breast, colon, ovarian, cervical), as well as for other leading causes of death.

That`s what makes these tables unusual, says Dr Lisa M Schwartz, a research associate at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vt., who helped gather and publish the information.

‘‘Commonly what happens is that people talk about risk in terms of one disease,`` she says. ‘‘But it`s hard to judge the risk of one disease when you can`t judge the risk of others or overall risk. This report puts information about one disease in the context of other diseases. It`s about putting cancer risk in the context of other conditions.``

The report has four risk tables — two for smokers, two for nonsmokers. Smoking gets special attention, Schwartz says, because ‘‘it is a big risk factor for multiple diseases, and thus has a big impact``. Bureau Report