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Localized pleural plaques and lung cancer
T Partanen1, M Nurminen, A Zitting
1Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland.
American Journal of Industrial Medicine
|January 1, 1992
Summary
Pleural plaques, identified in 7.6% of residents in a Finnish study, did not significantly increase lung cancer risk. Further research is needed to confirm if pleural plaques predict asbestos-related lung cancer outcomes.
Area of Science:
- Occupational and Environmental Medicine
- Radiology
- Epidemiology
Background:
- Asbestos exposure is a known cause of various lung diseases, including lung cancer.
- Pleural plaques are a common radiographic sign of past asbestos exposure.
- The association between isolated pleural plaques and lung cancer risk remains debated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the incidence of lung cancer in individuals with pleural plaques compared to those without.
- To assess whether pleural plaques are an independent predictor of lung cancer development.
Main Methods:
- A cohort study involving 7,986 residents from three Finnish communities surveyed in 1971.
- Identification of 604 subjects with pleural plaques (exposed group) and an equal number of matched referents without plaques (control group).
- Follow-up for lung cancer incidence between 1972 and 1989, using survival analysis (proportional hazards model).
Main Results:
- Twenty-eight cases of lung cancer occurred in the pleural plaque group and 25 in the referent group.
- The crude conditional relative risk (RR) for lung cancer was 1.1 (95% Confidence Interval [CL] = 0.7, 1.9).
- The adjusted hazard ratio from the proportional hazards model was 1.1 (CL = 0.6, 1.8), indicating no statistically significant increase in risk.
Conclusions:
- The presence of isolated pleural plaques alone did not demonstrate a statistically significant association with an increased risk of lung cancer in this cohort.
- The findings suggest that pleural plaques may not be a reliable sole predictor of lung cancer development in the absence of other asbestos-related radiographic signs.
- The study's results are inconclusive due to potential biases, necessitating further investigation into the predictive value of pleural plaques for lung cancer risk.