Carcinoma of the Lung

Our plain-English summary of Carcinoma of the Lung, by A. Ochsner (1960).

The study

• Author: A. Ochsner
• Published: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 8(3):159-167 March (1960)
• Type of article: Journal article
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This 1960 article, a 1959 talk to the American Geriatrics Society, is about lung cancer and cigarette smoking. It does not mention asbestos. Much of it described other researchers' studies, including those of the American Cancer Society, the Veterans Administration, and Doll and Hill, which the author cited as evidence that smoking causes lung cancer. The article's own material described 1158 lung cancer cases from the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans. Of these patients, 21 per cent were under 50, 68 per cent were 50 to 70, and 11 per cent were over 70. Almost 60 per cent of the tumors were in an upper lobe, and almost half were inoperable when first seen. Only 8.5 per cent of all patients were alive within five years. The figure was 15 per cent among patients whose tumor was removed and 32 per cent among those whose tumor seemed limited to the lung. The average delay from first symptoms to definitive treatment was 8.7 months. The author concluded that there is a causal relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Lecture presented at a society meeting. It reviews other investigators' studies of smoking and lung cancer and adds a descriptive case series from the author's clinic.
• Who was studied: 1158 cases of lung carcinoma at the Ochsner Clinic and Ochsner Foundation Hospital, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans. The years covered are not stated.
• Exposure: Cigarette smoking. No asbestos or other fiber exposure is discussed.
• Main results:
  • In the clinic group, 21 per cent were below age 50, 68 per cent were between 50 and 70, and 11 per cent were over 70.
  • Among five-year survivors, 38 per cent were less than 50 years old.
  • In almost 60 per cent of the clinic's cases, the tumor was in an upper lobe.
  • Almost half of the carcinomas in the series were inoperable when first seen.
  • Among 177 resected carcinomas, over half were epidermoid, 28 per cent were undifferentiated, and 17 per cent were adenocarcinoma.
  • Only 8.5 per cent of all patients were alive within five years.
  • Five-year survival was 15 per cent among patients with resections and 32 per cent among those whose lesion was apparently limited to the lung.
  • In the overall group, the average delay from onset of first symptoms until definitive therapy was 8.7 months.
  • The delay was 7.5 months for charity patients and 9.3 months for private patients. For private patients, 2.6 months of the delay was attributed to the patient and 6.2 months to the physician.
• The authors' conclusion: The author held that the evidence had accumulated to the point that a causal relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer could not be denied.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Carcinoma, Lung Cancer.

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