The true incidence, prevalence, and mortality of GCCL is generally unknown due to a lack of accurate cancer data on a national level. It is known to be a very rare tumor variant in all populations examined, however. In an American study of a database of over 60,000 lung cancers, GCCL comprised between 0.3% and 0.4% of primary pulmonary malignancies, with an age-adjusted incidence rate of about 3 new cases per million persons per year. With approximately 220,000 total lung cancers diagnosed in the US each year, the proportion suggests that approximately 660 and 880 new cases are diagnosed in Americans annually. However, in a more recent series of 4,212 consecutive lung cancer cases, only one (0.024%) lesion was determined to be a "pure"<unk> -cell carcinoma after complete sectioning of all available tumor tissue. While some evidence suggests GCCL may have been considerably more common several decades ago, with one series identifying 3.4% of all lung carcinomas as<unk> -cell malignancies, it is possible that this number reflect Most published case series and reports on<unk> <unk> -containing lung cancers show that they are diagnosed much more frequently in men than they are in women, with some studies showing extremely high male-to-female ratios (12:1 or more). In a study of over 150,000 lung cancer victims in the US, however, the gender ratio was just over 2:1, with women actually having a higher relative proportion of<unk> -cell cancers (0.4%) than men (0.3%).<unk> -cell carcinomas have been reported to be diagnosed in a significantly younger population than all non-small-cell carcinomas considered as a group. Like nearly all lung carcinomas, however, GCCs are exceedingly rare in very young people: in the US SEER program, only 2 cases were recorded to occur in persons younger than 30 years of age between 1983 and 1987. The average age at diagnosis of these tumors has been estimated at 60 years. The vast majority of individuals with GCCL are heavy smokers. Although the definitions of "central" and "peripheral" can vary between studies, GCCL are consistently diagnosed much more frequently in the lung periphery. In a review of literature compiled by Kallenburg and co-workers, less than 30% of GCCLs arose in the hilum or other parts of the "central" pulmonary tree. A significant predilection for genesis of GCCL in the upper lobes of victims has also been postulated.
Giant-cell carcinoma of the lung
Mucinous cystadenocarcinoma of the lung
Sarcomatoid carcinoma of the lung
Epithelial-myoepithelial carcinoma of the lung
Pulmonary sclerosing pneumocytoma
Adenocarcinoma of the lung
Salivary gland–like carcinoma of the lung
Mesothelioma