Abstract

ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND:
Despite the predominance of tobacco smoking as its presumed etiology, lung cancer is also a significant health problem in those with no history of smoking.
OBJECTIVE:
To assess the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of lung cancer in non smokers patients.
PATIENTS AND METHODS:
This was a retrograde across-sectional study conducted at Baghdad teaching hospital during the period from 14th February 2012 to 8th January 2013. Including 100 patients with proved lung cancer all were never smokers.Medical records of those patients were revised, data were collected regarding sociodemographic characteristics of patients and medical history in addition to the clinical characteristics. Data analyzed with SPSS software, and the results were presented in tables and figures accordingly.
RESULTS:
In the current study 100 patients with different types of lung cancer were included, all were never smoker.
Female gender was more common than males .In this study majority of the cases were aged 60 years and more.The prevalence of passive smoking among studied group was (39%),Urban residence was the dominant, 74%. On X-ray examination all the patients had positive findings; (99%) had unilateral findings and only one with bilateral.Adenocarcinoma was the predominant type, (51%) of the cases, which is much higher than the prevalence of other types. Adenocarcinoma was significantly predominant among females than males (64.7%) vs. (35.3%) respectively, P= 0.003.
majority of the cases were of stage IV (78%) and stage III (22%), this reflected the late presentation of the patients.Vast majority of dead cases (96.5%) were died within 2 years, and only 3 patients were survived for three years while none of the cases were survived for more than 3 years.
CONCLUSION:
The prevalence of lung cancer in non smoker women was higher than in men. In this study the prevalence of lung cancer seemed to be increased with the advancing age. Passive smoking was an important risk factor for lung cancer in more than one third of studied group, and women were more likely to be affected.