An Adenocarcinoma of Lung with Unusual Very Slow Growth -A case report-

The prognosis of lung cancer is very poor. Patients with lung cancer have usually no symptom in early stage or some mild cough, sputum. When patient feel weight loss or dyspnea, majority of patients with lung cancer are advanced stage and inoperable. The growth rate of lung cancer is different according to cell type of tumor and related to prognosis. Generally, tumor doubling time (TDT) of lung cancer has been known that small cell lung cancer is about 65 days, squamous cell carcinoma is about 90 days, and adenocarcinoma is about 185 days. There has been rarely reported of lung cancer with very fast or very slow growth. The prognosis of a slow growing lung cancer is relatively good but rapidly growing cancer is not. We report a very rare case that s䴸rgically treated early stage non-small cell lung cancer (adenocarcinoma) with 4-year- TDT without invasion or distant metastasis, (J Lung Cancer 2006;5(1):51 -54)