Asbestos and lung cancer

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos and lung cancer, by J. Suvatne, R.F. Browning (Disease-a-month, 2011).

The study

• Authors: J. Suvatne, R.F. Browning
• Journal: Disease-a-month
• Published: 2011;57(1):55-68
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This article was a narrative review of published research on asbestos exposure and lung cancer. It covered history, risk factors, how the disease may develop, tumor type, screening, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis, and it reported no new data. Citing other work, the authors gave an estimate that 4-12% of all lung cancers are due to asbestos exposure. They described an earlier study of insulation workers with age-standardized lung cancer mortality ratios of 5.17 in nonsmoking asbestos workers, 10.85 in smokers not exposed to asbestos, and 53.24 in smokers exposed to asbestos. They wrote that clinical asbestosis is generally thought not to be required to attribute lung cancer to asbestos. They also wrote that tumor location and cell type should not be used to support or refute asbestos as the cause, and that the idea that chrysotile is less potent than amphibole fibers for lung cancer has little supporting evidence. The authors concluded that widespread routine screening of people without symptoms is not recommended, even in asbestos-exposed people who continue to smoke, and that CT imaging is preferred over chest x-ray.

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: Narrative review of published literature (no original data)
• Who was studied: No study population; the authors reviewed published studies of asbestos-exposed workers and other exposed groups
• Exposure: Asbestos in general, including chrysotile and amphibole fibers, tremolite contamination, and asbestos-contaminated vermiculite, as discussed in the reviewed literature
• Main results:
  • Citing other work, the authors stated an estimate that 4-12% of all lung cancers are due to asbestos exposure
  • Early studies of insulation workers, as cited by the authors, found age-standardized lung cancer mortality ratios of 5.17 in nonsmoking asbestos workers, 10.85 in smokers not exposed to asbestos, and 53.24 in smokers exposed to asbestos
  • In a cited long-term prospective study of patients with pleural plaques, the relative risk of bronchial cancer in those with plaques was 1.6
  • The authors wrote that clinical asbestosis is generally thought not to be required to attribute lung cancer to asbestos exposure
  • The authors wrote that tumor location and histology should not be used clinically to support or refute asbestos as the cause of a lung cancer
  • The authors stated that the amphibole hypothesis, as it applies to lung cancer, has little supporting evidence
  • In a cited study of screening asbestos-exposed workers, sensitivity for lesions larger than 2 mm was 33% for chest x-ray and 83% for CT
  • The authors stated there is no evidence that asbestos-induced lung cancer has a worse prognosis than lung cancer from other causes
  • The authors stated that CT imaging is preferred over chest x-ray when assessing for lung cancer
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that widespread routine screening of people without symptoms is not recommended, even in asbestos-exposed individuals who continue to smoke

Topics

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

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Lung Cancer.

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