SMOKING HABIT AS A RISK FACTOR ASSOCIATED WITH OCCURRENCE OF LUNG CANCER

Abstract

Lung cancer is one of the most common causes of mortality in the world, right after cardiovascular diseases. The motivation for conducting this study was the fact that the number of newly diagnosed and death cases from lung cancer has been constantly growing, especially in the last few years. The aim of the study was to present lung cancer (LC) as a public health problem today at the global level as well as in the Republic of North Macedonia. This is an analytical case-control study. It included all patients with a confirmed diagnosis of lung cancer (LC) with histopathological analysis (examined group) and patients who have not had any history of malignancy (control group), in a period of six months. Survey data were collected using a specially designed questionnaire. The study included a total of 82 respondents in both, the examined and the control group. Regarding the habit of cigarette smoking, the largest percentage of examined respondents (56%) were current smokers, compared to the control group where the largest percentage (56%) were non-smokers. The results obtained showed that the two groups differed significantly with regards to the habit of cigarette smoking. This study confirmed the association of cigarette smoking habit and lung cancer, where several variables related to smoking were examined (age at which cigarette smoking started, number of cigarettes smoked per day, duration of smoking status, type of cigarettes).