Yearly chest radiography in the early detection of lung cancer following laryngeal cancer.

In a retrospective study of 556 patients (505 men, 51 women) with laryngeal cancer the incidence and prognosis of lung malignancies was studied in patients who were examined yearly by chest radiography. In 69 patients (12.4%) a lung malignancy was diagnosed, with 28 having a histologically confirmed second primary malignancy. All of these 69 patients were men. The incidence of radiologically detected lung malignancies, both second primary and metastatic cancer, is higher and more prolonged following supraglottic carcinoma than following glottic carcinoma. In 47 patients (68%) without symptoms, the lung malignancy was detected by routine annual chest radiography. The survival rate in patients with lung cancer detected by the yearly radiography was significantly higher than in patients diagnosed after symptoms (median survival 10 and 4 months, respectively). However, taking into account the lead time between early radiologic diagnosis and the time a tumor would have been diagnosed following symptoms, the observed survival benefit of yearly radiography was much lower, or even nil.