Lung cancer in younger patients.

Carcinoma of the lung is rare in younger patients, but occasional reports of this condition have appeared in the literature. This article reviews the clinical and pathological patterns of bronchogenic carcinoma in 96 patients, 40 years old or younger seen at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Hospital between 1956 and 1976. This review confirms the finding in other reports of a higher proportion of women among younger patients with lung cancer as well as a relatively low incidence of squamous cell carcinoma. Using comparative data from the UCLA and California tumor registries, we could find no significant difference in survival of the younger patients when compared with the general population of patients with lung cancer.