Karmanos Doctors Urge Increased Screening for Previously Treated Lung Cancer Patients, Especially Y...( CHICAGO June 1 /- Physicians at t...),Health

CHICAGO, June 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Physicians at the Karmanos Cancer Institute today presented the conclusions of their study, Risk of Second Lung Cancer in Patients with Previously Treated Lung Cancer: Analysis of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Result (SEER) Registry at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.

(http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20071106/KARMANOSCANCERINSTITUTELO GO)

Karmanos' Praveen Sivakumaran, M.D., along with fellow doctors Shirish Gadgeel, M.D., Ann Schwartz, Ph.D., Fawn Vigneau, JD, MPH, Khairul Islam, Ph.D. and Antoinette Wozniak, M.D., conducted a retrospective analysis of lung cancer patients in the National Cancer Institute's SEER Registry. The SEER Program registries routinely collect data on patient demographics, primary tumor site, tumor morphology and stage at diagnosis, first course of treatment, and follow-up for vital status. The SEER Program is the only comprehensive source of population-based information in the United States that includes stage of cancer at the time of diagnosis and patient survival data.

"Our study showed patients with a history of a previously diagnosed independent primary lung cancer have more than 2.5 times the incidence of developing second lung primary malignancies than the general population," said Dr. Sivakumaran.

Among the approximate 185,600 lung cancer patients found in SEER data from 1973-2001 (with follow-up through 2005), 4,087 went on to develop a second primary lung carcinoma. The vast majority (over 66 percent) of these second primary lung malignancies presented at advanced stages and on average developed in greater than five years. Further examination of the data showed female patients, younger than 50 years old were found to have the highest incidence of developing a second lung cancer compared to the general population. '/>"/>