Lung Cancer: A Chronic Disease Epidemiology; Prevalence Study

Abstract

Chronic lung diseases (CLD) including asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and their occurrence in multiple sclerosis (MS) remains of interest. Increasing awareness of the possible adverse effect of CLD on outcomes in MS, such as disability progression and mortality, has heightened the need to understand the relationship between these chronic conditions. Prevalence of lung Cancer was discussed in this paper, with intend to; investigate the number of patients and deaths affected with lung cancer, test the effect of sex on lung cancer incidence, test the effect of environment and educational level on lung cancer incidence, examine the trend in lung cancer, and measure the relative risk associated with lung cancer. Secondary data sourced from the records units of five different hospitals was used. Cross tabulation, Chi-square test for independence, regression analysis, correlation analysis and odds ratio were applied on the three year study. From the study, it was found that lung cancer cases are independent on environmental factor, educational level and sex. A strong linear relationship exists between lung cancer and death from such disease, implying that increase in the number of lung cancer cases has very high positive effect on the occurrence of death  (r = 0.783), 61.4% of the variation in death occurrence is explained  by lung cancer. The probability of dying from lung cancer is higher in patients 50 years and above than in younger patients (age < 50 yrs).