Presenting conditions of 1539 population-based lung cancer patients by cell type and stage in New Hampshire and Vermont.

The authors identified all newly diagnosed lung cancer cases in New Hampshire and Vermont for the period 1973 through 1976 and abstracted clinical data on presenting symptoms and findings from their hospital records. Microscopy slides were also reviewed, when possible, to confirm cell type. The most frequent presenting symptoms were weight loss (46%) and cough (45%). Other common symptoms were dyspnea (37%), weakness (34%), chest pain (27%), and hemoptysis (27%). The presence of symptoms and findings was in general related to disease stage but bore little relationship to cell type. These results differ from those of previously reported case series that were based on surgical, radiation therapy, or Veterans Hospital groups, but the current data agree closely with those from another population-based series in Finland.