Source: Annual Congress 2002 - Lung cancer: epidemiology and clinical characteristics
Disease area: Respiratory infections, Thoracic oncology

Abstract

Intrathoracic complications at first presentation in patients with lung cancer diagnosed at our clinic in last two years period were evaluated retrospectively. Intrathoracic changes (atelectasis, pleural effusion, pneumonia, etc.) secondary to lung cancer were recorded.
Ninety nine patients with a mean age of 63.01±]8.85 years were included. Tissue diagnosis were small cell carcinoma in 30.5% of the cases and non-small cell carcinoma in the rest (39.0% squamous cell carcinoma, 20.7% adenocarcinoma, 9.8% non-small carcinoma without definitive diagnosis). Intrathoracic complications were detected in 57 (57.5%) patients. Atelectasis was the most common (31.3%) complication. It was total in 2%, lobar in 3% and segmental atelectasis in 21.3%. Five percent of the atelectasis were due to compression of pleural effusion. Pleural effusion was detected in 19.2% of the cases. The rate of pulmonary parenchymal metastasis were 6%. Laryngeal nerve (hoarseness) involvement were seen in 4% of the patients. Superior vena cava involvement was also 4%. Other complications such as lymphangitic carcinomatosis, diaphragm paralysis, pneumonia, etc. were detected in 14.1%. When 33 cases with distant metastasis were compared with 66 patients without metastasis; complication rates were 63.6% and 54.5% respectively (p>0.05). According to histopathological types; the complication rates were 53.1% in squamous cell carcinoma, 64% in small cell carcinoma and 64.7% in adenocarcinoma (p>0.05). Atelectasis and pleural effusion were the most common complications observed in each three histopthologic types.
In conclusion, we detected intrathoracic complications in more than half of the lung cancer patients at first presentation. The most common complications were atelectasis and pleural effusion.

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Citations should be made in the following way:
Y. Bulbul, T. Ozlu, F. Oztuna (Trabzon, Turkey). Intrathoracic complications in lung cancer at first presentation. Eur Respir J 2002; 20: Suppl. 38, 571

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