Pathological profile of lung cancer in Tunisia

Introduction: primary lung cancer represents a major public health problem. Its incidence is increasing worldwide and between one in Tunisia. Aim: The aim of this work is to study the pathological profile of lung cancer in our department. Methods: A retrospective study on 200 patients treated between 2005 and 2010 for a primary lung cancer. Results: The average age of our patients was 60 years and the sex ratio was 10. Hundred and seventy eight cases of diagnosed patients were smokers or former smokers. Only one woman was smoking and only 14 among the 181 men were no-smokers. The tobacco intoxication average was 48.9 PA. The non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has represented the majority of primary lung cancer in our study with 165 cases (82.5%) against 35 cases (17.5%) of small-cell lung cancer (SCLC). Only one woman presented a small-cell carcinoma. The study of the distribution of histological types in the NSCLC showed a predominance of adenocarcinoma (47.5% of cases) followed by a lesser incidence of squamous cell carcinoma (28.5% of cases) and large cell carcinoma (3% of cases). The gender analysis has objectified the same frequency profile in women between adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. (63% against 21% of adenocarcinoma of squamous cell carcinoma). Other rare histologic types that were found in our patients: 2 cases of sarcoma, a case of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma, one case of adenosquamous carcinoma and one case of pleomorphic carcinoma. Conclusion: The histological distribution of primary lung cancer shows an increased frequency of adenocarcinoma being more frequent than squamous cell carcinoma (47.5% vs 28.5%) while the latter was clearly predominant in 1994 (42.8% versus 15, 3%).