A Retrospective Study of Lung Cancer in Women2

Abstract

In a controlled, retrospective investigation of 158 women with pulmonary carcinomas, the largest and the only statistically significant effects were associated with smoking history. The scale of relative risks by intensity of cigarette use was greater for epidermoid and undifferentiated carcinomas than for adenocarcinomas. For epidermoid and undifferentiated carcinomas all the relative risks, with respect to smoking history and rate of cigarette use, differed significantly from unity at the 0.1 percent level. The findings agree substantially with those from three other studies of lung cancer in women. The combined results of several investigations suggest that the characteristic excess lung-cancer mortality among males almost disappears when nonsmokers are studied, since male nonsmokers have only slightly higher rates than female nonsmokers.