Abstract

This study has been carried out to evaluate if there has been any changes on epidemiological properties of cases with lung cancer by the time in our institute. Information was recorded retrospectively on 343 unselected cases with lung cancer during 1991-2002. 90% of the cases were male, 10% were female. In females, 29.4% were current smokers (CS), 8.8% were ex-smokers (ES) and 61.8% were non-smokers (NS). In males, 73.6% were CS, 22.5% were ES and 3.9% were NS (p=0.000). Study period was grouped as “period I” representing 1991-1994, “period II” representing 1995-1998, “period III” representing 1999-2002. There was no female on the period I; however, 12.4% of the cases of period II and 11.1% of the cases of period III were female. Although there was no change on smoking status of females during the periods, current smokers significantly decreased from 92.5% to 64.1% from period I to III in males (p=0.000). In females, adenocarcinoma was the second most common tumor following small-cell carcinoma, whereas epidermoid carcinoma was the most common tumor type in males. Although there is a considerable decrease in the number of current smokers of males. Interestingly, adenocarcinoma is seen in only nonsmokers in females, whereas in males all the cases with adenocarcinoma were smokers. These findings suggest that other factors should have roles on the development of adenocarcinoma in females.