A Study of Routine Cytologic Screening of Sputum for Cancer in 800 Men Consecutively Admitted to a Tuberculosis Service

¹ Division of Pulmonary Medicine and the Department of Laboratories, Queens Hospital Center Affiliation of the Long Island Jewish-Hillside Medical Center, New York City, and the Schools of Medicine and Basic Health Science, The Health Sciences Center, State University of New York at Stony Brook
² Cytopathologist-in-Charge, Department of Laboratories, Queens Hospital Center; Assistant Clinical Professor of Pathology, School of Basic Health Sciences, Health Sciences Center, State University of New York at Stony Brook
³ Director, Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Queens Hospital Center; Associate Professor of Medicine, School of Medicine, Health Sciences Center, State University of New York at Stony Brook

To ascertain the diagnostic value of routine sputum cytologic screening in searching for lung cancer among patients with tuberculosis, 800 men over 40 years of age consecutively admitted to a large urban tuberculosis center were studied during a two-year period. Seventy-one percent of the patients submitted specimens satisfactory for examination, and of these, 57 (10 percent) were either positive or highly suggestive of cancer. Follow-up of the 57 patients revealed histologic, clinical or death certificate confirmation of the diagnosis in 50 of them. Active tuberculosis coexisted with lung cancer in one-quarter of these cases. "Blind" radiologic evaluation of the initial x-ray films of the 50 confirmed cases indicated that without the cytology, 26 patients (51 percent) would not have had the diagnosis of cancer suggested.