Varied Clinical Manifestation Of Lung Cancer And Approach To Diagnosis

Abstract

Lung cancer is one of the important causes of death in world . From being an uncommon cause of cancer, it has become one of the most common. It is estimated that by the year 2030, 10 million deaths will have occurred due to lung cancer worldwide. There is need to understand the early signs and symptoms of the disease. To study the frequency of occurrence of symptoms of cancer of lung, and patterns of presentation of primary lung cancer, and in a tertiary referral centre in India, and to compare frequency of occurrence of symptoms among male and females and ever-smokers versus non-smokers. Inpatient records of all patients admitted during the study period were examined and all patients with a histologically proven diagnosis of bronchogenic carcinoma were recruited. Data were entered into a pre-prepared proforma for further qualitative and statistical analysis. Total number of patients taken for this study was 55. Male: Female ratio being 41:14. Mean age 60.7 years. 44 patients were smokers. Median duration of symptoms was 3 months. NSCLC was the most common cancer among the patients in which Adenocarcinoma was most common. Cough was the most common symptom among the selected patients (82%). CT guided biopsy was the main investigating procedure to obtain the diagnosis, and 80% of selected patients had radiological visible mass. 80%  of patients presented with stage IV lung cancer. A cancer patient can present with multiple symptoms, and can be confused with other diseases specially tuberculosis. Early diagnosis and treatment initiation is a must in these patients. Squamous cell carcinoma is being replaced by Adenocarcinoma as the most common type of lung cancer in India.