Lung cancer patients' journey from first symptom to treatment: Results from a Greek registry

Lung Cancer in Greece

“…Patients with adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma had better performance status compared with those with SCLC. 7 The median duration from symptom onset to diagnosis was 52 days for patients with advanced or metastatic disease, and it was shorter for those in early stages. The median duration from diagnosis to treatment was 23 days, and patients with SCLC experienced shorter elapsed time from diagnosis to referral or treatment initiation compared with other lung cancer types.…”

“…6 These numbers place Greek men, in particular, in the thirdplace of lung cancer mortality in Europe, after Hungary and Serbia. 6 To go even further, if one takes into account the recently reported, projected standardized incidence rates for Hungary derived from the Hungarian HeLP study, 7 Greece ranks second in lung cancer incidence among men in Europe, second only to Serbia. Consequently, it was estimated that 6690 men and 1660 women lost their lives to lung cancer in Greece in 2018, 6 thus, rendering lung cancer the leading cause of cancerrelated death among Greek men and the second among Greek women, after breast cancer.…”

“…6 Despite ongoing efforts, a national lung cancer registry in Greece is still lacking. A retrospective study of a hospital-based lung cancer registry was conducted in the Oncology Unit of Sotiria Hospital in Athens 7 ; data on 473 patients with NSCLC were analyzed. Most patients were men (78.2%), with a median age of 66.8 years.…”

“…Among those tested, 67% were tested before initiation of first-line treatment, and 26% of those patients had PD-L1 tumor proportion score greater than equal to 50%. 7…”

Epidemiology, treatment, and survival in small cell lung cancer in Spain: Data from the Thoracic Tumor Registry

“…The representation of SCLC patients in lung cancer registries is scarce and ranges between 13.5% and 19% [10,15]. Hence, the main evidence on epidemiological and clinical data of SCLC is often retrieved from hospital-or population-based studies [16][17][18][19][20]. The Thoracic Tumor Registry (TTR) is an observational, multicenter study of lung cancer and other thoracic tumors that was created by the Spanish Lung Cancer Group (GECP) in 2016 with the aim of collecting and unifying population-based data at a national level [21].…”