Background/aim: This study aimed at contributing to a better diagnosis of lung cancer by analyzing the patient's symptoms and their linkage to other characteristics.
Patients and methods: We analyzed the data of 3,322 patients from LUCAS (LUngCAncerfocuS) National Registry of the Czech Republic. Overall survival was assessed using the Kaplan-Meier method.
Results: The most common symptoms were cough (47.5%), dyspnea (45.6%), pain (27.3%), and weight loss (25.7%). Among all patients, 16% were asymptomatic. We demonstrated the negative prognostic significance of increasing number of lung cancer symptoms, that was significant after adjustment for age, TNM stages, and performance status, and morphological types of the cancer.
Conclusion: Monitoring the severity and type of symptoms in patients with lung cancer can help in the diagnostics of the disease and the estimation of prognosis.
Keywords: Lung cancer; cough; dyspnoea; fever; hemoptysis; prognosis; symptoms; weight loss.
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