Objective: Lung cancer (LC) is one of the most common cancers and the main causes of cancer mortality in the world. The aim of this study was to investigate the epidemiology of lung cancer incidence and mortality in 185 countries and its relationship with the HDI index in 2018.

Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive-analytic study conducted on the extraction of incidence data and mortality rates of cancers from Cancer World Bank in 2018. The incidence and mortality rates and lung cancer distribution maps were drawn for World countries. To analyze the data, the correlation and regression tests were used to evaluate the correlation between the incidence and mortality with HDI. The statistical analysis was conducted by Stata-14 and the significance level was estimated at the level of 0.05.

Results: With 209,386 new cases (12.22 per 100,000) and 1,761,007 deaths (19.88 per 100,000), lung cancer has the highest incidence and mortality rate in the world. The highest incidence rate (56.7 per 100,000) and mortality (44.4 per 100,000) of lung cancer were in Hungary. According to a projection, the incidence and mortality rate of lung cancer are expected to increase from 2018 to 2040, and the results showed that there was a positive and significant correlation between incidence (R=0.724, p<0.001) and mortality (R=0.702, p<0.001) of lung cancer with HDI in both sexes. The linear regression model showed that the increase in MYS (B=1.3, p<0.05) and LBE (B=0.3, p<0.05) increased the incidence of lung cancer (p<0.05), and also the increase in HDI, MYS, LEB, and EYS were caused by increases in mortality, but the increase was not statistically significant (p> 0.05).

Conclusions: With the highest global incidence, motility, and an upward trend by 2040, lung cancer has a considerable global importance, and the human development index (HDI) can be an important factor in reducing the incidence and mortality of patients.