Incidence and Clinicopathologic Features of Primary Lung Cancer: A North-Eastern Anatolia Region Study in Turkey (2006-2012)

Abstract

Background: Lung cancer is the most frequent cancer among men and second highest among women overall, including in Turkey. Cigarette smoking is the most important etiologic factor for the development of cancer in both men and women. Objective: To determine the lung cancer incidence in Northeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey with a focus on clinical properties, cancer subtypes, the relationships of tumors with cigarette smoking and radiological properties of the lesions. Materials and Methods: In a retrospective study design, 566 lung cancer cases diagnosed at the Pathology Department of Ataturk University in Erzurum over the last seven years extending from January 2006 to June 2012 were investigated. The results were compared with statistical analyses. Results: The most common histopathological subtype of primary bronchogenic carcinoma in our study was found to be the squamous cell carcinoma, 46.1% (261 out of 566), and the second was small cell lung carcinoma 15.7% (89 out of 566). Based on our data, an overall male predominance was noted with a male/female ratio of 6.1/1. While 296 (52.2%) of the patients were found to be smokers at the time of diagnosis, 125 (22.0%) were nonsmokers and 145 (25.6%) were ex-smokers. Smoking status was found to have a strong correlation with primary lung cancer (p <0.05), and there were significant differences between males and females (p<0.001). Conclusion: Although relative prominence of subtypes of lung cancers differ between Turkish and other populations, lung cancer overall remains as an important health problem in Turkey. Our findings stress the critical need for effective cancer prevention programs such as anti-smoking campaigns.

Epidemiological and Clinicopathological Characteristics of Lung Cancer in a Teaching Hospital in Iran

“…The mean age of our patients was 65.7 years (SD=11.2) years which was close to other studies previously reported from Iran (Ehteshamifar et al, 2001;Hosseini et al, 2009;Tarrahi et al, 2009;Zahir and Mirtalebi, 2012;Ghobadi et al, 2013). This finding was also similar to those found in several studies carried out in other countries (Santos-Martinez et al, 2005;Missaoui et al, 2011;Demirci et al, 2013;El-Basmy, 2013). Clinically, similar to other studies, the majority of patients seeking medical advice complained of cough, dyspnea, chest pain, and hemoptysis (Ehteshamifar et al, 2001;Ghobadi et al, 2013;Mandal et al, 2013).…”

“…As the majority of our patients were men with 72.9% of cases with central lesions, this histological majority was not beyond our expectation and in agreement with several reports from Iran (Ehteshamifar et al, 2001;Tarrahi et al, 2009;Najafi et al, 2010;Zahir and Mirtalebi, 2012) and also with some from other areas(SantosMartinez et al, 2005; Rabahi et al, 2012; Mandal et al, 2013). Two other histological types of lung cancer (SC and AC), with a tiny difference, ranked second and third which were similar to findings reported by others, nationally and globally (Ehteshamifar et al, 2001;Tarrahi et al, 2009;Najafi et al, 2010;Rabahi et al, 2012;Zahir and Mirtalebi, 2012;Demirci et al, 2013;Mandal et al, 2013). In some other countries, AC type of cancer was reported to be the most common histological type of lung malignancy (Rosai, 2009;Thompson et al, 2012;Nakamura and Saji, 2013) but this trend toward AC was not occurred in our study because of low percentage of female patients and probably no significant change in smoking habits in our patients.…”

“…According to the histological distribution of lung cancer based on gender, the findings of this study was comparable to a study reported from Turkey (Demirci et al, 2013) in which SCC comprised the majority of tumors (50.9%) in men. In a study reported from the southern part of Iran, SCC was the most frequent histological type of cancer in men (41.4%) followed by AC and SC, although the difference was negligible (Tarrahi et al, 2009).…”

“…The contribution of smoker women in our study was 15.8% .This contribution was 13-14% (Ehteshamifar et al, 2001;Hosseini et al, 2009) or 38.7% (Tarrahi et al, 2009) in other Iranian studies. Meanwhile, the propportin of female smokers in some reports from other countries was much higher than what we found, including 34.1% in Turkey (Demirci et al, 2013), 38% in Spain (Santos-Martinez et al, 2005), and 68% in India (Mandal et al, 2013). A probable reason for this could be a lower rate of smoking in Iranian women than those countries.…”

AGER genetic polymorphisms increase risks of breast and lung cancers

“…Lung cancer (LC) is regarded as another malignancy with worldwide influence, especially in industrialized countries where constitutes 20% mortality from all cancer types (Al-Alao et al, 2013). In spite of its prevalence among both men and women, the highest incidence of LC occurs in individuals between 50 to 70 years of age (Demirci et al, 2013). The majority of patients with LC are diagnosed at an advanced stage, and the 5-year survival rate remains poor, at only approximately 10-15% (Feng et al, 2014).…”