Five-year survival rates for people with lung cancer have doubled since the 1990s, but the disease still kills more patients than any other type of cancer, a Statistics Canada report said on Wednesday.

The report said the number of people living five yearsafter they were diagnosed jumped from 13 per cent to 27 per cent between 1992 and 2021.

Lung cancer is still responsible for almost a quarter of all cancer deaths in Canada, it said.

The report attributed the increase in lung cancer survival to new treatments, including drugs that target specific molecules in cancer cells and immunotherapy that prompts the patient’s immune system to attack cancerous cells.

“Back in the 1990s, getting a lung cancer diagnosis, it truly was a bit of a death sentence,” said Jessica Moffatt, vice-president

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