Histological pattern of primary malignant lung tumours diagnosed in a tertiary care hospital: 10 year study

Lung cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in the world and is the second commonest cancer according to hospital-based data from Kashmir, India. The objective of this study was to assess the histopathological pattern of primary malignant tumours of lung at a tertiary care hospital among smokers and non-smokers of both sexes. A total of 783 cases over a 10 years period, were studied, including 685 males and 98 females with a mean age at presentation of 57.8 years. The most common histological type of tumour in both sexes was squamous cell carcinoma (71.3 per cent), followed by small cell carcinoma (20.8 per cent), adenocarcinoma (2.6 per cent), bronchioalveolar carcinoma (1.8 per cent) while other tumours constituted 3.6 per cent. The two main histological subtypes of lung cancer found among smokers was squamous cell carcinoma (72.2 per cent) and small cell carcinoma 22.9 per cent. The smoker to non-smoker ratio was 2.14:1.