Myriad clinical presentations of Lung cancer: A single centre cross–sectional study at a tertiary care centre in West India

GS Chowdhary; Kunal Kishore; Sharad Yadav

Volume : IX, Issue : III, March - 2020

Myriad clinical presentations of Lung cancer: A single centre cross–sectional study at a tertiary care centre in West India

Gs Chowdhary, Kunal Kishore, Sharad Yadav

Abstract :

Background: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death globally and is now considered as the commonest fatal malignancy in the developed world. India contributes to 20% of all deaths due to lung cancer in the world. Methods: To study the clinical and paraneoplastic presentations of lung cancer, we carried out a single centre, cross sectional observational study on a cohort of 100 patients of freshly detected Lung cancer. Results: Mean age of the subjects was 56.36 years and 30% of the cases were above 60 years of age. Majority (63%) of them were males and smokers (59%). Most common presenting symptoms were cough (22.21%), chest pain (16.13%), fever (14.37%), dyspnoea (11%) and hemoptysis (5.22%). Paraneoplastic syndromes comprised of anemia and leucopenia (20%) cases followed CNS manifestation (in 8%) cases. No association was observed between type of lung carcinoma and paraneoplastic syndrome. Conclusion: Our study confirms the high prevalence of lung cancer in male smokers with predominantly respiratory complaints. Paraneoplastic syndromes are not a rare entity in such patients and a high level of clinical suspicion is required for early detection of such cases.