Epidemiological and clinical features of lung cancer patients from 1999 to 2009 in Tokushima Prefecture of Japan

Abstract

Lung cancer is the leading cause of malignancy-related death worldwide. In the present study, we reviewed the epidemiologic and clinical features of lung cancer in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan. Between January 1999 and December 2009, 2,183 patients with lung cancer were enrolled in this study. One thousand five hundred ninety-one (73%) patients were male and 592 (27%) patients were female. Median age was 70 years, with a range of 15-93 years. Seventy-six percent of patients had smoking history. One thousand nine hundred five (87%) patients were non-small cell lung cancer and the predominant histological type was adenocarcinoma (51%). Among all 2,183 patients, 702 (32%) belonged to elderly population. Four hundred seventy-one (22%), 213 (10%), 24 (1%), 116 (5%), 238 (11%), 370 (17%) and 678 (31%) patients had stage IA, IB, IIA, IIB, IIIA, IIIB and IV lung cancer, respectively. In Tokushima University Hospital, 516 (29%), 191 (11%), 58 (3%), 755 (43%) and 216 (12%) patients were initially treated with chemotherapy, chemo-radiotherapy, thoracic radiotherapy, operation and best supportive care, respectively. The median time to progression (TTP) and the median survival time (MST) of patients treated with chemotherapy and chemo-radiotherapy were 3.5 months, 13.0 months and 7.0 months, 18.0 months, respectively. The median TTP and the MST of 33 elderly patients treated with chemotherapy were 3.3 months and 18.0 months, respectively, which were comparable with those of total population. These results indicated the benefit of chemotherapy in elderly patients with advanced lung cancer by proper selection.

Incidence and Clinicopathologic Features of Primary Lung Cancer: A North-Eastern Anatolia Region Study in Turkey (2006-2012)

“…The male/female ratio in India has been found as 4.1/1, which is lower than the results in our study (Dey et al, 2012). In Japan the ratio is 2.8/1 (Kanematsu et al, 2010). In a study in 2010, 255 patients diagnosed with lung cancer in 2005, 220 of whom (86.3%) were male and 35 were female (13.7%) are evaluated in Erzurum (Araz et al, 2010).…”

“…One of the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide is lung cancer with 1.18 million deaths of the world total (Kanematsu et al, 2010). Recent studies about epidemiology of lung cancer have showed that disease continues to be diagnosed considerably more in men than women (Araz et al, 2010;Kanematsu et al, 2010;Dey et al, 2012).…”

“…Recent studies about epidemiology of lung cancer have showed that disease continues to be diagnosed considerably more in men than women (Araz et al, 2010;Kanematsu et al, 2010;Dey et al, 2012). When the minor variations excluded, lung cancer is the most frequent cancer among men and the second most common cancer among women in the World, including Turkey (Araz et al, 2010).…”

Characteristics and prognosis of Japanese male and female lung cancer patients: The BioBank Japan Project

“…As a result, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in Japanese males and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in Japanese females, respectively 7 . This poor prognosis is mainly due to the unfavorable fact that lung cancer is often diagnosed at an advanced stage 8, 9, 10, 11. The frequency of late diagnosis of lung cancer also varies among histological types 10, 11…”

Elevated levels of preoperative circulating CD44+ lymphocytes and neutrophils predict poor survival for non-small cell lung cancer patients

“…Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide in both men and women [1][2][3]. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for 80% of all lung cancer cases.…”