Lung Cancer in a Sample of Iraqi Patients

Abstract

Background: Lung cancer is responsible for the most
cancer deaths in both men and women throughout the
world. Deaths from lung cancer (160,440 in 2004,
according to the National Cancer Institute) exceed the
number of deaths from four other major cancers combined
(breast, colon, pancreatic and prostate).
Objective: To assess the behavior and the approaches of
lung cancer in a sample of Iraqi patients.
Methods: This descriptive retrospective study was
performed using the records of 390 patients proved to have
lung cancer that had attending the Thoracic Surgery
Department of Surgical Specialties Hospital-Medical City
\Baghdad for the period from January, 1st
, 2001 to
December, 31st
,2002.
Results: The results of this study revealed that 71.8% of
the patients were male, with a mean age of 63 years. The
majority of the patients (90.2%) were smokers, the number
of cases increases with the increase in the duration of
smoking or the amount of daily cigarette smoking.
Radiotherapy is the primary management of 75.9% and the
surgical choice was in 24.1% of the patients, but the
tumors were removed only in 42.5% of operable patients.
Conclusions: Lung cancer is an important and serious
public health problem with an increasing in incidence and
prevalence in Iraq; cough is the most common clinical
finding, found in 98.5% of patients, followed by
haemoptysis (64.1%); cigarette smoking is responsible for
the at least 90% of its etiology. Sequamous cell carcinoma
is the most common type of primary lung cancer in Iraq
(42.6%) with prominence in male gender; adenocarcinoma
is the second common type with equal distribution in male
and female