A cross-sectional study on risk factors, symptoms, treatment and management strategies of lung cancer in a tertiary care cancer hospital of Bangladesh

Abstract

Lung cancer is the most common clinical problem of Bangladesh. Lung cancer is the uncontrolled, abnormal growth of cells that starts off in one or both lungs, usually in the air passages of cell lining. This study has represented the current scenario of lung cancer in the tertiary care hospital of Dhaka city, covering a range of parameters including age, gender, location, environment, education level, lifestyle, and family history, smoking or tobacco consumption habit, clinical features, mode of diagnosis, treatment received and medications prescribed to the in-patients of National Institute of Cancer Research & Hospital (NICRH). The study protocol was initially approved by Ethical Review board of National Institute of Cancer Research & Hospital (NICRH) to run this survey. This study was enrolled with 210 patients diagnosed with lung carcinoma. Majority of them were male patients. Around 89.522% of patients among 210 patients were male and only 10.48% were female. Lung carcinoma was observed more prevalent in age range of 51-60 years old and among rural people the risk was even higher. Among three types of lung carcinoma, non-small cell lung carcinoma diagnosed patients were in majority 62.86% . This study also found that coughing is the most reported and chest pain is the second most reported symptom by patients. In case of diagnostic tests, FNAC was the most referred test for patients by physicians. Chemotherapy was also given; around 80.48% patients received chemotherapy effectively. Besides surgery, radiography and target protein therapy were also recommended. Combination of alkylating agents and antimetabolites were also prescribed for chemotherapeutic drug cycles. Among this combination of cisplatin and paclitaxel was prescribed most (41.90%). From this study we can conclude that we need to be more careful, so that lung carcinoma can be diagnosed in initial stage. As it does not show any symptoms in early stage of lung carcinoma, regular health checkup of lung function each year might prove an effective way to minimize mortality rate. In this fact government peoples keen attention is in need.