A Clinical study on the Hypercalcemia in Primary Bronchogenic Carcinoma

Park, Hye Jung; Shin, Kyeong Cheol; Moon, Young Chul; Chung, Jin Hong; Lee, Kwan Ho; Sung, Cha Kyung; Lee, Hyun Woo

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Lung cancer-associated hypercalcemia is one of the most disabling and life-threatening paraneoplastic desorders. Humoral hypercalcemia is responsible for most lung cancer-associated hypercalcemia. Patients with hypercalcemia are usually in the advenced atage with obvious bulky tumor and carry a poor prognosis.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Total 29 patients satisfied the following criteria: histologically proven primary lung cancer, corrected calcium level> or =10.5 mg/dL, and symptons which could possibly be attributed to hypercalcemia. In this retrospective study, we evalluated the various clinical aspects of hypercalcemia, in relation to cancer stage, histologic cell type, mass size, bone metastasis, performance status, and other possible characteristics
RESULTS
Total 29 lung cancer patients with hypercalcemia were studied, and most of them had squamous cell carcinoma in their histologic finding. The incidence of hypercalcemia was significantly higher between 50 and 69 years of age, and in the advancement of cancer stage. Although serum calcium level showed positive correlation with mass size, performance statusm and bone ore frequent in the patients with higher serum calcium level. There were no differences in effectiveness among therapeutic regimens. Hypercalcemia was more frequently in the later stage of disease than during the initial diagnosis of lung cancer. Most of the patients died within 1 month after development of hypercalcemia.
CONCLUSION
We concluded that hypercalcemia in lung cancer is related to extremely poor prognosis, and may be one of the causes of drath and should be treated aggressively to prevent sudden deterioration or death.