Bronchial carcinoma. I. A prospective five year study on an unselected carcinoma population in a Swedish county

No prospective clinical investigations of unselected total materials of bronchial carcinoma have been reported. The clinical profile of 273 patients with histologically verified bronchial carcinoma from a Swedish county during 1971-1976 is presented. The difficulties in making valid comparisons with other literature reports makes it necessary to describe in detail the total material. Such a description is given in the present paper. In order to avoid different selection mechanisms an attempt was made to collect an almost total material. No patients were lost in the follow-up. Autopsy was performed in 95% of the deceased patients. The distribution of the histological WHO groups in the total material was: 44% group I, 18% group II, 29% group III and 9% group IV. The material was used for randomized investigations of radiotherapy, chemotherapy and placebo treatment in inoperable patients with the purpose of studying the quality of survival in addition to survival time. For the measurement of the quality of survival the Carlens vitagram index was used (Carlens et al. 1970). The influence of a general health survey with mass miniature chest X-ray was also studied, since such a survey was performed in the region of the study. The expected 5-year survival is estimated to be 7%. Only 20 patients with resectional therapy without known signs of metastases are expected to survive. Nine (45%) of these patients were discovered by mass miniature chest X-ray and thus for a limited number of patients the detection by the general health survey gives a better prognosis.