The Etiology of Bronchogenic Carcinoma

Our plain-English summary of The Etiology of Bronchogenic Carcinoma, by A. Ochsner (1963).

The study

• Author: A. Ochsner
• Published: 1963
• 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 article, by Alton Ochsner of New Orleans, was a narrative review of the causes of bronchogenic carcinoma (lung cancer), presented at a meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians. It did not report a new study of its own, and the readable text does not mention asbestos. The author reviewed vital statistics and published studies on lung cancer and cigarette smoking. Among the work cited was a study by Lombard. In it, the lung cancer rate was approximately 24 per 100,000 population in people who began smoking after age 20, and 44 in those who began between ages 15 and 19. The author also cited experiments in which cigarette tar applied to animals' skin over time produced cancer. The author stated that air pollution was of no significance in lung cancer, and that influenza infection, once thought to be a cause, had been disproved as one. The author concluded that the only hope at present was prevention, because the cure rate was extremely low, approximately 5 per cent. Much of the scanned text was unreadable.

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: Narrative review of the causes of lung cancer, presented as a lecture at the 20th Annual Meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians; no original study
• Who was studied: No study population of its own; the author reviewed published vital statistics and studies of lung cancer, mainly in smokers and non-smokers
• Exposure: Cigarette smoking, with air pollution (smog) and influenza infection discussed as proposed causes; asbestos is not mentioned in the readable text
• Main results:
  • In a study by Lombard cited by the author, the lung cancer rate was approximately 24 per 100,000 population in people who began smoking after age 20
  • In the same cited Lombard study, the rate was 44 in those who began smoking between ages 15 and 19
  • The author cited experiments in which cigarette tar applied to the skin of animals over time produced true carcinoma
  • The author stated that influenza infection, once thought to cause lung cancer, had been disproved as a cause
  • The article's Spanish summary states that air pollution has no significance in bronchogenic cancer
  • The author stated that more people in the United States would die of lung cancer the next year than would be killed in automobile accidents
  • The author stated that the cure rate for lung cancer was approximately 5 per cent (the figure is legible in the Spanish summary)
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that bronchogenic cancer is preventable and that, at present, the only hope is prevention, because the cure rate is extremely low

Topics

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

Browse return to medical research.