Lung adenocarcinoma is the most common cell type in females (smokers or non-smokers) and in non-smoking males. Its incidence has been increasing in younger cohorts of males and females until very recent years. Changes in classification and in pathological techniques account for some of this increase. In females and non-smoker males, the increase could be partly due to a detection bias in former studies. Nevertheless, successive cohorts over time seem more likely to develop adenocarcinoma and less likely to develop squamous cell carcinoma. These differences between birth cohorts suggest that the increasing incidence of adenocarcinoma is not only due to changes in pathological diagnosis. Geographical differences are also observed: in Europe, the squamous cell type still predominates and an increase in incidence of adenocarcinoma has only been reported in the Netherlands. In Asia, in the 1960s and 1970s, the proportion of adenocarcinoma was higher than in North America or Europe and seems to be increasing. To what extent these differences are due to differences. In establishing diagnosis remains unknown. Despite these biases in temporal and geographical trends detailed in this review, there has probably been a true increase in incidence of adenocarcinoma. An explanation for this should be sought in studies on detailed smoking history and passive smoking exposure, occupational exposure, diet and cooking, pollution and other environmental factors.

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We conducted a prospective, randomized study to clarify the role of radiotherapy of the primary tumor in limited small-cell cancer of the lung. After stratification for sex and for performance score based on the ability to ambulate, patients were randomly assigned to receive initial radiotherapy plus chemotherapy, delayed radiotherapy plus chemotherapy, or chemotherapy alone. The chemotherapy consisted of cyclophosphamide, etoposide (VP-16-213), and vincristine, with doxorubicin subsequently replacing etoposide in alternate cycles 7 through 18. Chemotherapy was given every three weeks for 18 months. The radiotherapy comprised 4000 rad in four weeks, followed by a 1000-rad "boost" directed against residual disease. All patients received prophylactic whole-brain radiation. The patients enrolled totaled 426, and 399 were evaluable. There was a statistically significant difference in the frequency of complete responses in favor of the two radiotherapy regimens (P = 0.0013). Failure-free survival was also longer with these two regimens (P less than 0.001), as was the interval before treatment failure in the chest (P less than 0.001) and overall survival (P = 0.0099). As expected, toxic effects--chiefly neutropenia--were also increased. The addition of radiotherapy of the primary tumor to combination chemotherapy improved both complete-response rates and survival, with increased but acceptable toxicity.

First-line treatment with cetuximab plus gemcitabine/platinum is well tolerated and can be administered safely in patients with advanced NSCLC. Differences in response rate, progression-free survival, and overall survival suggest that the addition of cetuximab to platinum/gemcitabine may improve clinical outcomes. Larger studies are in progress to address this hypothesis.