Clinical course of lung cancer in patients with chronic kidney disease

Co-morbidity has a major impact on survival in early and late-stage lung carcinoma. Patients maintained on dialysis are potentially at increased risk of cancer. However, since very few studies have examined the clinical course of lung cancer in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), we felt it was important to study the course of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC) in this patient population. We performed a retrospective chart review of patients diagnosed with lung cancer and co-existent CKD. 107 patients (101 males and six females), with a mean age at diagnosis of 69 years (range: 39-86 years) were included in our study. Of these, 17 (15.9%) patients had SCLC while 87 (81.3%) had NSCLC. Dyspnea, weight loss, and chest pain were the most common symptoms at presentation in our patient population occurring in 25, 20, and 15% of patients, respectively. The median survival of all the patients in the study was 10 months (range: 0-116 months). Patients with SCLC had a median survival of 7 months. Patients with NSCLC had a median survival of 10 months. We found that the clinical course and survival in patients with lung cancer and CKD appear to be comparable to that of patients with lung cancer, but without kidney dysfunction. Hence though treatment of lung cancer does need to be individualized in the setting of CKD, it should not dissuade the clinician from treating the malignancy.