Abstract

In this study, we aimed to investigate changing epidemiologic features and distribution of histopathology of lung cancer within a 6-year period. We determined the cases diagnosed as primary lung cancer in our center in 1992, 1995, and 1998. The files of cases were retrospectively analyzed. The number of cases with lung cancer was 960 in 1992, 1184 in 1995, and 1287 in 1998. The ratio of female to male patients was 1:13.8 in 1992, 1:11.5 in 1995 and 1:10.9 in 1998. Although there was an increase in ratio of female patients, this was not statistically significant. There was not a significant change in number of cases below 40 years of age whereas there was an evident increase in the number of cases over 60 years of age (p<0.0005). The mean age was 56.4±9.4 in 1992 and 57.9±10.2 in 1998 (p=0.056). While proportion of cases with squamous cell carcinoma decreased from 60.6% in 1992 to 49.7% in 1998, the proportion of cases with adenocarcino - ma increased from 13.5% in 1992 to 30.9% in 1998 (p<0.0001). As a result, our study involving a time period of 6 years showed that there were changes in some epidemiologic features like histopathol