Asbestos and cancer of head and neck

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos and cancer of head and neck, by P.M. Stell, T. McGill (Lancet, 1973).

The study

• Authors: P.M. Stell, T. McGill
• Journal: Lancet
• Published: 1973;1(7804):678
• Cited by: 19 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 001320).

Summary of the article

This letter reported a hospital-based comparison of workplace asbestos exposure among patients with head and neck cancer. The authors, at the Ear, Nose and Throat Infirmary of the University of Liverpool, questioned 100 male patients with carcinoma of the head and neck about their exposure to asbestos. They also collected data from 100 controls, matched for age and sex, who were attending the hospital for various non-malignant diseases. No dates for the study were given. In all, 22 of the cancer patients had been exposed to asbestos at work, compared with 2 of the controls. The occupations with asbestos exposure most often reported were unloading raw asbestos on the docks, scaling boilers, and insulating pipes with asbestos. The latent interval between the start of exposure and the development of carcinoma was 31 years, and the average period of exposure was 24 years. The authors reported that the difference between patients and controls for the whole group was statistically highly significant (χ2 = 16.6, n = 1). They stated that their table, which broke the results down by cancer site, suggested that asbestos exposure was most likely to be important in laryngeal carcinoma. They reported that a more detailed study of this group was being undertaken.

PubMed has no abstract for this study, and the article doesn't print one. We wrote this summary from the full article with the help of AI. It is not the authors' wording.

In plain English

This was a short letter to the editor reporting a comparison of cancer patients with patients who did not have cancer. The authors, from the Ear, Nose and Throat Infirmary at the University of Liverpool, questioned 100 male patients with carcinoma of the head and neck about past exposure to asbestos. They collected the same data from 100 controls matched for age and sex who were attending the hospital for various non-malignant diseases. In total, 22 of the 100 cancer patients had been exposed to asbestos at work, compared with 2 of the 100 controls. The authors reported that this difference was statistically highly significant. The most common jobs involving exposure were unloading raw asbestos on the docks, scaling boilers and insulating pipes with asbestos. The letter did not name the type of asbestos fiber. The latent interval from first exposure to the cancer was 31 years, and the average period of exposure was 24 years. The authors concluded, from a table that is not included in this text, that asbestos exposure appeared most likely to matter in laryngeal carcinoma. They said a more detailed study of that group was being undertaken.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: case-control comparison reported in a letter to the editor (patients with cancer compared with matched hospital controls)
• Who was studied: 100 male patients with carcinoma of the head and neck and 100 controls matched for age and sex who were attending the hospital for non-malignant diseases; the authors were at the Ear, Nose and Throat Infirmary, University of Liverpool
• Exposure: occupational asbestos exposure (fiber type not stated); the most common jobs were unloading raw asbestos on the docks, scaling boilers and insulating pipes with asbestos; average period of exposure 24 years
• Main results:
  • 22 of the 100 head and neck cancer patients had been exposed to asbestos at work, compared with 2 of the 100 controls
  • The authors reported the difference between patients and controls for the whole group as statistically highly significant (chi-square 16.6)
  • Among exposed patients, the latent interval between the beginning of exposure and the development of a carcinoma was 31 years, and the average period of exposure was 24 years
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that, judging from their table, asbestos exposure appeared most likely to be of importance in laryngeal carcinoma, and that a more detailed study of this group was being undertaken

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Throat and laryngeal cancer.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Asbestos Exposure, Carcinoma.

Related studies

• Risk factors for nasal malignancies in German men: the South-German Nasal cancer study — E.M. Greiser, K.H. Greiser, et al. (2012)
• Nasal and sinonasal cancer. Connection with occupational exposures in Denmark, Finland and Sweden — S. Hernberg, P. Westerholm, et al. (1983)
• Solitary fibrous tumour of the nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses — I. Alobid, L. Alós, et al. (2003)
• Nasal cancer and occupational exposures. Preliminary report of a joint Nordic case-referent study — S. Hernberg, Y. Collan, et al. (1983)
• Occupational exposures to asbestos, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and solvents, and cancers of the oral cavity and pharynx: a quantitative literature review — S. Paget-Bailly, D. Cyr, et al. (2012)
• Epidemiology of head and neck cancer — K.J. Rothman (1978)

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