A Review of 33 Cases Of Primary Carcinoma of the Lung in Women

여성에서 발생한 원발성폐암에 대한 임상적 고찰

There has been an alarming rise in the incidence of carcinoma of the lung in the world. The increase of the disease has been greater in men than in women, but even in women the rate has doubled in the last 20 years. During the 20 year period 1957 through 1976, 33 women with proven primary carcinoma of the lung were treated at Department of Thoracic Surgery, Seoul National University Hospital. During the period of survey, 170 consecutive cases of primary bronchogenic carcinoma were encountered in men, a male to female ratio of 5.2: 1. Ages of patients with bronchogenic carcinoma in women ranged from twenty-seven to sixty-eight years and most of them were over 40 years of age. The duration between the onset of symptoms and admission was about 9 months and the most common complaints were cough [66.6%], chest pain [60.6%], hemoptysis [48.4%] and dyspnea [45.4%]. Bronchogenic carcinoma developed most frequently in the upper lobes, and twelve [36.3%] of cases were squamous cell type, nine [27.2%] were anaplastic cell type, six [18.2%] were adenocarcinoma, one was alveolar cell type and five were unclassified type, in contrast to the usual predominence of adenocarcinoma among women in other reports. One half of the patients were inoperable and resection was feasible in only 24.2 per cent of the patients. There was no operative mortality but one case had bronchopleural fistula after pneumonectomy. Most patients with bronchogenic carcinoma in women were from large cities. Cigarette smoking appeared to be related to the occurrence of the squamous cell and anaplastic cell carcinoma because all heavy smokers had squamous cell or anaplastic cell carcinoma.