Introduction:

lung cancer became the second cause of death in 2020 according to data from the World Health Organization. Primary lung cancer is very common although the lungs are also a frequent site of metastasis originated from extrathoracic organs.

Objective:

to characterize patients with lung cancer according to clinical and epidemiological variables.

Methods:

an observational, descriptive and retrospective study was carried out to characterize clinically and epidemiologically the presence of lung cancer in 110 adult patients treated in the Pulmonology service at “Arnaldo Milıán Castro” Clinical and Surgical University Hospital from October 2020 to October 2022.

Results:

most of the patients diagnosed with lung cancer corresponded to the year 2020 (38.18%): female (59.09%), white (59.09%), age group 60 - 69 years (44.50 %), retirees (63.63%), smokers (82.72%) and with a family history of this disease (97.27%). Cough was the main symptom (95.45%) and infiltrating poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma predominated (19.09%). The type of lung cancer was non-small cell cancer (84.54%) and the treatment was chemotherapy (49.09%).

Conclusions:

patients with lung cancer were diagnosed more frequently in 2020. Subjects over 60 years old, female gender, white skin color, retirees and smokers predominated. The most common histological variety was non-small- cell lung cancer and infiltrating poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma predominated.