Patients with spontaneous pneumothorax have a higher risk of developing lung cancer: A STROBE-compliant article

Lung cancer is a common malignancy worldwide, and risk factors include bronchitis, asthma, tuberculosis, smoking, and air pollution. These are also risk factors for spontaneous pneumothorax, a benign disease. We hypothesized that patients who experience a spontaneous pneumothorax have a greater risk to develop lung cancer, and designed a study to determine if this is so. We used the population-based Taiwan Health Insurance Research Database to perform a retrospective cohort study. The database includes more than 99% of the population of Taiwan. We established a 27,405-person pneumothorax cohort and a 109,620 person comparison cohort with data from 2000 to 2009 to evaluate the relationship between spontaneous pneumothorax and lung cancer. Multivariable analysis showed that patients who have had a spontaneous pneumothorax have a greater relative risk to develop lung cancer. The overall hazard ratio was 2.09 (95% confidence interval 1.69-2.58) adjusted by age, gender, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and chronic lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, tuberculosis, asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema. A dose effect was present; a high frequency of spontaneous pneumothorax was associated with a greater relative risk to develop lung cancer. If the spontaneous pneumothorax frequency was greater than 2 times per year, the hazard ratio was 34.09 (95% confidence interval 22.74-51.10) Patients with spontaneous pneumothorax have an increased relative risk to develo...
Source: Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Tags: Research Article: Observational Study Source Type: research