Characteristics of lung cancer patients--the Shaukat Khanum Memorial experience.

OBJECTIVES: The aims of this descriptive study were to characterize lung cancer patients by age at diagnosis, smoking status, and histology and, also to explore the histologic sub-type according to cigarette smoking, in a tertiary care setting. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A retrospective review of 830 patients for whom smoking status was available in the records was carried out at a comprehensive cancer care facility, the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center, situated in Lahore, Pakistan. RESULTS: The mean age at presentation of the 830 evaluable cases was 59.8 years (standard deviation 11.8, range 18-90). Stratifying by gender, statistically significant differences were found in the average age at diagnosis between males (60.1 years) and females (57.5 years) and, in the distributions of non-smokers, current smokers, and ex-smokers, but none for histology. CONCLUSIONS: Similar to other populations, the age of disease onset amongst females was lower than that seen in males. The proportion of smokers was higher amongst males versus females. The reversal of smoker to non-smoker ratio when stratified by gender, may highlight the importance of exploring alternate pathways implicated in the etiology of lung cancer in our population.

Geographical variation in the epidemiology of esophageal cancer in Pakistan.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: To evaluate whether factors such as the geographic area of residence, sex, and anatomic subsite of esophagus can prognosticate the histologic subtype of esophagus cancer. DESIGN: To study the major histologic subtypes of esophagus cancer stratified by various factors through multivariate analyses using morphology as the dependent factor and gender, province, and subsite of esophagus as independent factors. SETTING: A tertiary care cancer hospital situated in the city of Lahore in Pakistan. PATIENTS: Three hundred and thirty five patients diagnosed either with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma or adenocarcinoma, from December 1994 to April 2004, were included. Subjects were residents of either Punjab or the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan. MAIN RESULTS: An excessive likelihood of development of squamous cell carcinoma versus adenocarcinoma was established for the Northwest Frontier Province as compared to Punjab (odds ratio 2.7, 95 percent confidence interval: 1.2, 6.2, p = 0.02), and in the upper-third of the esophagus relative to the lower-third of the organ (odds ratio 8.8, 95 percent confidence interval: 2.8, 28.3, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This histologic variation may be explained by environmental and lifestyle factors peculiar to geographical regions.