Abstract
We studied the clinical features and surgical outcomes of multiple primary malignancies originating from head, neck and esophagus in resected cases of lung carcinoma as compared with multiple primary malignancies in other organs and non-multiple primary lung carcinoma cases. One hundred twenty-eight lung carcinoma cases out of 1279 resected cases with lung carcinoma presented other malignancies in other organs at our clinic from 1985 to 1999. The multiple-organ carcinomas consisted of 14 cases involving head and neck, 12 cases involving esophagus, 24 cases involving stomach, 33 cases involving colon, 17 cases involving hepatoportal organs, 28 cases involving genitourinary organs, 6 cases involving breast, 3 cases involving thyroid gland, 3 cases involving lymph and other organs, including 117 cases of double (91.4%), 10 cases of triple (7.8%), and a case of quadruple (0.8%) carcinoma. Forty cases were subsequent to lung carcinoma, 66 cases were prior to lung carcinoma, and 22 cases were synchronous within 6 months. The smoking index of the cases in the A group (which included head, neck and esophagus malignancies) was significantly higher than that of the B group (which included other multiple malignant cases) or the C group (which included non-multiple primary lung carcinoma cases). The means of the smoking index for these groups were: 1031, 693, and 714 repsectively, p=0.0174, p=0.0192. Moreover, as for histology, the number of cases with squamous cell carcinoma was significantly higher than that with adenocarcinoma in the A group, as compared to the B and C groups (squamous cell carcinoma: adenocarcinomas=18:5, 32:61, and 394:648 respectively, p<0.0001, p<0.0001). Multiple malignancies, including lung carcinoma, have tended to increase in the past few years. The development of multiple malignancies in lung carcinoma patients including head, neck or esophagus carcinoma, may be significantly related to smoking status.
