[In which stage we diagnose and how we treat lung cancer?]

To determine the stage of the disease, performance status of the patients on admission and treatment modalities, records of 226 patients with lung cancer diagnosed between January 1992 and December 1999 were evaluated retrospectively. The mean age of the patients were 61.3 +/- 10.3 years (mean +/- standard deviation) and 217 (96%) were men and 9 (4%) were women. Of the 192 cases with non-small cell lung cancer 22.9% were stage 4, 40.6% were stage 3b, 22.4% were stage 3a, 4.2% were stage 2, 9.9% were stage 1. Of the 34 (15.1%) patients with small cell lung cancer, 26.5% were extensive and 73.5% were in limited stages. The performance status according to European Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) was between 0-2 in 88.4% and 3-4 in 11.6% of the cases. A positive correlation between the performance status and the stage of the disease was observed (p= 0.0331). It was detected that the performance status of the patients who underwent surgery was better than the patients who treated with radiotherapy (p= 0.0008). Radiotherapy (RT), chemotherapy (CT), surgery, combined therapy (RT + CT), adjuvant RT and palliative therapy were performed in 27%, 20.4%, 11.5%, 1.3%, 1.8% and 14.6% of the cases respectively. No information about treatment protocol was able to obtained in 23.4% of the patients, probably due to referrals, early deaths etc. In conclusion, more than half of our cases with lung cancer were diagnosed in advanced stages as a possible result of late admission to physician and surgery were performed in only a small part of the cases. It was detected that performance status of the patients operated was better than the patients treated with radiotherapy. On the other hand, combination therapy was applied in few cases.