[Lung cancer and age factor]

The authors provide the results of examination and treatment of 920 young patients under 45 (group I) and 462 elderly patients aged 60-74 years (group II). It has been revealed that in the young patients, primarily affected were the distal, proximal, intermediate and main bronchi. In group I patients, the tumor was localized in the intermediate or in the main (extrapulmonary) bronchus (in 6.9 and 9.8% of cases, respectively). In the elderly patients, the analogous data accounted for 2.7 and 1%, respectively. The segmental bronchi were more often involved in the patients of group II (11.3%) than in those of group I (5.3% of the cases examined). Analysis of the forms of lung carcinoma shows that in group I patients, the tumor was more often located near the root. Thus, in the young patients, the nodular peribronchial and peripheral (connected with the bronchus gap) forms of growth have been recorded in 34.1 and 25% of the cases examined whereas in the elderly patients, only in 14 and 13.1% of the cases. It has been noted that group I patients mostly demonstrated poorly differentiated carcinoma (47.6%) rather than high-differentiated epidermoid cancer (35.8%). Meanwhile high-differentiated adenocarcinoma was seen only in 16.4% of the cases analyzed. In the elderly patients, the estimates were respectively 29.6, 59.0 and 11.2%. It should be emphasized that in young male patients, poorly differentiated carcinoma occurred 1.7 times more often that in group II patients (48.8 and 28.3%, respectively).