Characteristics of lung cancer diagnosed by fibrobronchoscopy in patients under 40

Objective To study the clinic characteristics and the relation of histopathology with age, gender, location and the sign of fibrobronchoscopy in lung cancer patients diagnosed by fibrobronchoscopy under 40 years of age. [Methods] We analyzed retrospectively the fibrobronchoscopy data of 104 young lung cancer patients enrolled between January 1980 and December 2004. [Results] Of the 104 patients, the male/female ratio was 1.6/1. Compared with the more common older patients, the young patients had an increased percentage of women (P 0.005). The most common histopathology was squamous cell carcinoma (39.8%), followed by small cell carcinoma (26.1%) and adenocarcinoma (22.7%) in 88 young patients with histologically proven lung cancer. Among 104 young lung cancer patients, 75.0% had direct sign, and 25.0% had indirect sign. Most squamous cell carcinoma had cauliflower-like tumour, most small cell carcinoma had polypus-like tumour or infiltrative lesion, while most adenocarcinoma had polypus-like tumour or indirect sign. There were not obviously different about the cancer′s distribution between left and right lungs (P 0.05) while the location of squamous cell carcinoma was more in the right lung (P 0.005). [Conclusion] This study suggests fibrobrochoscopy is an important approach in diagnosis of young lung cancer. Paying more attention to the lung cancer of young patients and examining with fibrobronchoscopy would be helpful to earlier diagnosis.