Is second only to - Tradução em português

I was readind a little text in english on a English magazine where there was a not usual sentence (at least to me). It was

"Bowel cancer is second only to lung cancer as a western carcinogenic killer".

Was I read it right? - I thought firstly. I though it was missing something more to give signification to the sentence. How should I translate that? I think it could be something like "O câncer de intestino perde somente para o câncer de pulmão como matador carcinogênico ocidental". Then the word "second" gets a new significations in that context.

Am I right?