The relevance of "Nonsmoking-associated lung cancer" in India: a single-centre experience

Lung cancer remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, accounting for more deaths than any other cancer cause.

The aim of this study was to analyze the clinical profile and the epidemiological trends in lung cancer patients from a single centre with an emphasis on the smoking practices.

This is a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data of 258 consecutive hospital in-patients with a proven diagnosis of lung cancer at a tertiary care oncology centre between 2003 and 2007.

The median age of patients in our study was 56 years; the male to female ratio was approximately 3.5:1. Non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was the predominant histology in 224 patients; the histology in the remaining 34 patients was small-cell carcinoma. Within NSCLC, the most common histology was adenocarcinoma followed by squamous cell carcinoma. One hundred and two patients were never-smokers as compared to 156 patients who were ever-smokers. Among the smokers, the majority of them were found to be cigarette smokers compared to 28.2% bidi smokers. There was a very significant correlation found with adenocarcinoma among nonsmokers, and with squamous cell carcinoma among the smokers compared to non-smokers.

Our study suggests that the epidemiology of lung cancer in India is possibly changing, with close to 40% of our lung cancer patients being nonsmokers. More importantly, our study reflects the global trend of rise in adenocarcinoma histology. These observations need to be substantiated in similar studies of larger magnitude, preferably population-based.