1. The Conundrum of Dual Primary Malignancies: Four Years’ Experience of a Single Tertiary Care Institute in India
- Author
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Arti Sarin, Divya Shelly, Amul Kapoor, Abhishek Purkayastha, Samir Gupta, Niharika Bisht, Harinder P. Singh, Sankalp Singh, Prabha Shankar Mishra, Richa Joshi, and Deepak Mulajker
- Subjects
Pediatrics ,medicine.medical_specialty ,business.industry ,Incidence (epidemiology) ,Cancer ,Disease ,Second primary cancer ,Malignancy ,medicine.disease ,Tertiary care ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Oncology ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health ,medicine ,Life expectancy ,030212 general & internal medicine ,Family history ,business - Abstract
Background: Encountering more than one malignancy in a cancer patient is no longer uncommon; this increasing incidence is mostly attributable to the improvements in life expectancy, awareness, and diagnostic facilities. This article aims to highlight this institute’s experience in diagnosis and treatment of patients of multiple primary malignancies and a comprehensive review of literature. Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive study of retrospectively collected data of a single institution over 4 years from 2013 to 2016. Known cases of cancer who were diagnosed with a second primary malignancy were included in the study. Various details such as age, sex, site of disease, temporal relation of two cancers (synchronous or metachronous), family history, tobacco use, treatment given, and survival at 1 year were recorded, organized in a tabular form, analyzed, and described. Results: A total of 29 cases of dual malignancies comprising 0.74% of a total of 3879 patients of cancer were encountered. Seventy-two percent of the cases were metachronous and 5 years was the mean time interval between tumors. There was a female preponderance, and the average age was 56 years. Breast was the most common site of malignancy. At 1 year from diagnosis of second primary, 69% of the patients were alive and 27% were disease-free. Conclusion: Second primary in a patient of cancer is becoming increasingly common and the suspicion of the same should always be borne in mind during follow-up. Prognosis as well as intent of treatment depends on respective stages of the two malignancies.
- Published
- 2019