RESUMEN
PURPOSE: This study was performed to find out the natural history of lung cancer in Pusan-Kyungnam area and changing of that in previous report. MATERIALS AND METHOD: We studied retrospectively 508 patients with pathologically proven lung cancer from January 1991 to December 1995. We analysed age and sex distribution, initial symptoms before diagnosis, first method yielding histologic diagnosis, cell types of lung cancer, initial stage of lung cancer, schema of overall patients, survivial of lung cancer patients, and prognostic factors affecting survival of lung cancer patients.. RESULTS: The overall male to female ratio was 4.5: 1 and the age distribution ranged from 20 to 86 years, and the median age of overall patients was 60 years. Histologic classification revealed that the most prevalent type was squamous cell carcinoma (251 cases, 49.4%), followed by adenocarcinoma (141 cases, 27.8%), small cell carcinoma (91 cases, 17.9%), and large cell carcinoma (3 cases, 0.6%). In non-smali cell lung cancer 56.8% were stage IIIb and IV, therefore curative operation was done in 18.7% of all cases, but in small cell lung cancer 65.6% were extended disease. Meidan survival of overall patients was 11.8 months. There was a quite difference in survival among the stages. In non-small cell lung cancer, median survival was 59.7 months, 27.3 months, 18.5 months, 12.7 months, 5.9 months in stage I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IV in each. In small cell lung cancer, median survival of limited disese was 12.2 months and median survival of extended disease was 6.7 months. The stage and the performance status were independent prognostic factors in both small cell and non-small cell lung cancer. CONCLUSION: The prognosis of patients with lung cancer was still grave, but the survival was better than that of a previous report. This may be accorded to increase in early diagnosis and operation and advance in supportive care.