The Relationship of Smoking and Cancer of the Lung

Our plain-English summary of The Relationship of Smoking and Cancer of the Lung, by A. Ochsner (1955).

The study

• Author: A. Ochsner
• Published: The American Surgeon 21(6):517-532 June (1955)
• 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 1955 article was presented at the Southeastern Surgical Congress. It does not mention asbestos. The author reviewed statistics and other researchers' work on cigarette smoking and lung cancer, and described autopsy observations by Tulane's Department of Pathology. Public Health statistics cited in the article showed age-standardized lung cancer death rates in United States women rising from 0.6 per 100,000 in 1914 to 4.3 per 100,000 in 1950. The author described an experiment by Graham and Wynder: cigarette smoke tar applied to animals' skin produced tumors, while animals given the solvent alone developed none. The Tulane autopsy study found metaplasia in the bronchial lining of moderate smokers and changes interpreted as premalignant in heavy smokers. The author also cited Breslow and associates and an American Cancer Society survey of about 200,000 men aged 50 to 70. In that survey, compared with nonsmokers, heavy cigarette smokers had a death rate from heart disease 95 per cent higher and from all cancers 136 per cent higher. The author concluded that cigarette smoking caused the rise in lung cancer and urged that smoking be discouraged.

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 and opinion paper presented at a surgical congress. It draws mainly on national statistics and other investigators' studies, and also describes autopsy observations by the Tulane Department of Pathology, given without a published reference.
• Who was studied: No single study population. Sources discussed include United States and other countries' lung cancer statistics, an autopsy series by the Tulane Department of Pathology, Breslow and associates' 518 lung cancer patients and 518 comparison patients, and an American Cancer Society survey of approximately 200,000 men aged 50 to 70
• Exposure: Cigarette smoking (not asbestos)
• Main results:
  • Age-standardized lung cancer death rates in United States women (figure 3, from Public Health statistics cited by the author) rose from 0.6 per 100,000 population in 1914 to 4.3 per 100,000 in 1950
  • Graham and Wynder experiment (another group's work): animals treated with the solvent alone, without cigarette tar, developed neither benign nor malignant tumors
  • Tulane Department of Pathology autopsy study (reported by the author): moderate smokers had metaplasia of the bronchial lining; heavy smokers had marked changes interpreted as premalignant
  • Breslow and associates (another group's study of 518 patients with lung cancer and 518 comparison patients): in men over 50, lung cancer was 4 to 11 times as frequent among smokers as nonsmokers
  • American Cancer Society survey (another group's study): death rate from heart disease 95 per cent higher in heavy cigarette smokers than in nonsmokers
  • American Cancer Society survey: death rate from all cancers 136 per cent higher in heavy cigarette smokers than in nonsmokers
  • American Cancer Society survey, coronary disease deaths: 650 per 100,000 among men who did not smoke, compared with 1,477 among those who smoked more than a pack a day
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that cigarette smoking is the cause of the increase in lung cancer, regarded the causal relationship as established, and urged that smoking be discouraged

Topics

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

Browse return to medical research.