Clinico-pathology of Lung Cancer in a Regional Cancer Center in Northeastern India

Background: Globally, there have been important changes in trends amongst gender, histology and smoking patterns of lung cancer cases. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study was conducted on 466 patients with lung cancer who were registered in Regional Cancer Center, Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, Manipur from January 2008 to December 2012. Results: Most were more than 60 years of age (67.8%) with a male: female ratio of 1.09:1. Some 78.8% of patients were chronic smokers with male smoker to female smoker ratio of 1.43:1. Consumption of alcohol was found in 29.4%, both smoking and alcohol in 27.5%, betel nut chewing in 37.9% and tobacco chewing in 25.3%. A history of tuberculosis was present in 16.3% of patients. The most frequent symptom was coughing (36.6%) and most common radiological presentation was a mass lesion (70%). Most of the patients had primary lung cancer in the right lung (60.3%). The most common histological subtype was squamous cell carcinoma (49.1%), also in the 40-60 year age group (45.9%), more than 60 year age group (51.6%), males (58.1%) and females (41.8%). As many as 91.9% of squamous cell carcinoma patients had a history of smoking. About 32.5% of patients had distant metastasis at presentation with brain (23.8%) and positive malignant cells in pleural effusions (23.1%) as common sites. The majority of patients were in stage III (34.4%), stage IV (32.5%) and stage II (30.2%). Conclusions: Our analysis suggests that the gender gap has been narrowed such that about half of the patients diagnosed with lung cancer are women in this part of India. This alarming rise in female incidence is mainly attributed to an increased smoking pattern. Squamous cell carcinoma still remains the commonest histological subtype. Most of the patients were elderly aged and presented at locally or distantly advanced stages.