Clinicopathological characteristics of primary lung cancer patients at King Hussein Medical Center

Objective: to study the demographic and clinical features of patients diagnosed with lung cancer at our hospital and the stage of disease at presentation in various histopathology subtypes

Methods: a retrospective descriptive study conducted in oncology clinic at King Hussein Medical City in Amman -Jordan from January 2014 till August 2015, all patients diagnosed with lung cancer in this period included in our study. Clinical data collected from these patients include demographic data [age, sex, and smoking status], symptoms of presentation, histopathology subtype of tumor, and clinical stage of disease at presentation, anatomical location, and site of metastasis at presentation

Results: a total 112 patients included in our study; 96 male patients [85.7%] and 16 female patients [14.3%], whom age range from 22 years to 85 years with mean age of 62.2 years. Most patients were symptomatic at presentation. Small cell lung cancer [SCLC] was found in 23.2% [26 patients], Non- small cell lung cancer [NSCLC] in 76.8% [86 patients]: [squamous cell carcinomas 59.3%, adenocarcinoma 25.2 %, Non-small cell carcinoma NOS 11.6 %, others 3.4%].88% of our patients were smokers. Seventy percent of patients presented with metastatic disease. Most common sites of metastasis were lung followed by liver and bone

Conclusions: squamous cell carcinoma was still the predominant histopathological type in our patients, which is strongly associated with smoking. Most of our patients were symptomatic at the time of diagnosis, with significant number of those were diagnosed in metastatic stage

Anthracotic mediastinal lymphadenopathy: case report

We report the case of a male patient, known to have rheumatic mitral valve disease, who presented to us with huge mediastinal lymphadenopathy and dry cough. He was a life-time non-smoker and the only past medical history was his exposure to smoke during the Gulf war in 1991. This patient was in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion and had a continuous exposure to the polluted environment. Mediastinoscopic lymph node biopsy confirmed the diagnosis of anthracotic reactive lymphadenopathy and excluded other causes. Anthracotic pigmentation is a common finding in mediastinal lymph node biopsies especially in smokers, but symptomatic huge lymphadenopathy was rarely reported. This observation and its correlation to the gulf war are also not reported in the literature