RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Changing Pattern of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Between the 90th and 2000th Decades§
Jesus Montesinos*, 1, Marisa Bare2, Elsa Dalmau3, Eugeni Saigi3, Pablo Villace4, Miquel Nogue5, Miquel Angel Segui3, Anna Arnau1, Xavier Bonfill6
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 5
First Page: 24
Last Page: 30
Publisher ID: TORMJ-5-24
DOI: 10.2174/1874306401105010024
Article History:
Received Date: 26/1/2011Revision Received Date: 6/4/2011
Acceptance Date: 8/4/2011
Electronic publication date: 21/6/2011
Collection year: 2011
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background:
In Europe, approximately 381,500 patients are diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) every year. The aim of this study is to analyse the changes in diagnosis, treatment and evolution during the last two decades, using data from a hospital registry.
Material and Methods:
Patients diagnosed with NSCLC at the Corporació Sanitària Parc Taulí-Sabadell (Catalonia, Spain) during the periods 1990-1997 (n=748) and 2003-2005 (n=311) were included. The hospital tumour registry was used for prospective data collection.
Results:
Our series shows a significant increase in women diagnosed with NSCLC (6% vs 10.3%; p 0.01) in the latter period; the incidence of adenocarcinomas increased by 20% (31% vs 51.1%), whereas that of squamous cell carcinomas fell (51.3% vs 32.5%; p<0.001). The proportion of patients receiving active treatment also increased significantly, from 56.6% to 76.5% (p<0.001). Disease stage at diagnosis and the number of patients treated by radical surgical resection remained unchanged. Among the favourable independent prognostic factors for survival were: gender (women), age less than 70 years old, Karnofsky index ≥70%, early stage at diagnosis, treatment with chemotherapy, and being diagnosed in the latter period 2003-2005 (HR 0.67). Over this 10-year period, absolute gain in mean survival in our series was 115 days.
Conclusions:
The absolute gain in mean survival in NSCLC patients in the period studied was 3.8 months, with a 6.75% increase in 5-year survival. Hospital registry data may help the correct assessment of epidemiological changes and the real effectiveness of treatments, which are sometimes overestimated in clinical trials.
