[Pathologo-anatomical characteristics of lung cancer (analysis of 2000 autopsy records 1981-1985)]

2000 autopsy protocols have been scrutinized for 1590 males and 410 females who died of lung cancer in Leningrad and Petrozavodsk in 1981-1985. The findings, compared to those for 1953-1957, evidence for older age of the population at the terminal stage of the disease, more frequent cases of associated primary tumors (by 2.19%), greater proportion of squamous and bronchioloalveolar cell carcinoma (a rise from 24.6 and 1.2 to 45.7 and 3%, respectively). The proportion of small cell carcinoma, on the contrary, tended to decrease (from 48.4 to 22.6%). Lung cancer metastases used to emerge with similar frequency in patients subjected to radical operation and those surgically untreated. In 41 out of 144 lethal intraoperative and postoperative outcomes metastases were found to involve the other lung, viscera, mediastinal and distant lymph nodes. Further progress in the diagnosis of metastatic spread and adequate preoperative examination of the patients are thought to promote a valid choice of patients to be operated on.