Rising incidence of bronchioloalveolar lung carcinoma and its unique clinicopathologic features

Abstract
Background. Bronchioloalveolar lung carcinoma (BAC) is a unique type of lung cancer with distinguishing pathologic, biologic, epidemiologic, demographic, and perhaps etiologic features. Methods. The authors investigated and analyzed all of the cases of pathologically confirmed BAC seen at our institution in the hope of discovering new or confirming known features of this disease. Results. When cases of BAC expressed as a percentage of total lung cancers were analyzed in successive 5-year periods from 1955 to 1990, BAC rose from less than 5% to 24.0% (P Conclusions. The emergence of BAC as a prominent type of lung cancer should stimulate new basic laboratory and case-control studies to elucidate further the natural history and etiology of this unique disease. Cancer 1994; 73:1163-70.