Clinico-pathological profile of lung cancer in North Indian population

Lung cancer is the most common cancer representing approximately12% of all new cancers. It is also the most frequent type of cancer in males and remains the most a common cause of cancer-related mortality in both sexes. An increasing incidence of lung cancer has been observed in India. We studied the clinical and pathological profile of patients with lung cancer in a tertiary care center. We performed a retrospective analysis of histopathologically proven cases of bronchogenic carcinoma admitted in our hospital. In our study we included 203 patients with confirmed cases of lung cancer. Male to female ratio was 8.2:1. The common age group being 40-60 years, 9.86% of the patients were less than 40 years old age. Smoking was found to be the main risk factor for 81.77% patients. The most frequent symptom was a cough (72.90%) followed by fever (58.12%). The most common radiological presentation was mess lesion (46.31%). The most common histopathological type was squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) (44.83%) followed by adenocarcinoma (19.78%) and small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) (16.75%). The majority patients (73.29%) were diagnosed in the later stages of the disease (3b and 4). Squamous cell carcinoma was the most frequent histopathological form. Smoking remains the major risk factor for lung cancer.