Morbidity and Mortality Due to Cancer of the Lung in 1200 In-Patients with Pulmonary Disorders; a Follow-Up Study

¹ Copenhagen County Hospital, Department C

A consecutive series of approximately 1200 patients with pulmonary disorders admitted to one medical department in the five-year period 1939 to 1943 was followed for 10 to 15 years in order to demonstrate the importance of lung cancer for morbidity and mortality.

Twenty eight cases of primary neoplasma malignum pulmonis and one case of primary neoplasma malignum pleurae were demonstrated. Twenty cases were detected during the reference admission. In seven men and in two women, bronchogenic carcinoma was demonstrated later (Table 1).

During the observation period, cancer of the lung was the cause of death in approximately 10 per cent of the men and in approximately 2 per cent of the women who were more than 40 years old at the time of the reference admission. For men in the subgroup listing pulmonary disease as the cause of death, carcinoma of the lung ranked next to acute infections. In this subgroup, not nearly as many men died from bronchitis/asthma/emphysema as women for whom this was the main cause of death (Table 2). No correlation was demonstrated between other pulmonary diseases and cancer of the lung.