In the United States, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death among both men and women. The popularity of smoking tobacco throughout the twentieth century is usually considered accountable for the prevalence of the disease, cigarettes having been linked to about 90 percent of lung cancer cases in men and 80 percent in women.

Yet, alveolar cell carcinoma appears to have no relationship to smoking. The disease, also known as bronchoalveolar carcinoma, instead appears to be most likely to develop in individuals whose lungs have been scarred by other diseases, such as scleroderma, tuberculosis, or fibrosis.

Carcinomas of the lung are generally classed into two fundamental types: small cell carcinomas and non-small cell carcinomas. Small cell carcinomas account for about 20 to 25 percent of all cases of lung cancer and are usually more aggressive than non-small cell carcinomas. Only in very rare instances do small cell carcinomas ever appear in people who have never smoked cigarettes or other tobacco products. Non-small cell carcinomas often grow and spread more slowly than small cell carcinomas and are usually further subdivided into several subtypes of cancer. One subtype of non-small cell carcinoma is adenocarcinoma, which accounts for approximately 35 percent of all cases of primary lung cancer diagnosed in the United States and is characterized by its development in the lining or inner surface of an organ. A variant of adenocarcinoma is alveolar cell carcinoma, which originates in the epithelia of alveoli, the small, capillary-rich air sacs of the lung that are the site of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange.

Alveolar cell carcinoma frequently occurs as a single nodular mass, in which case the disease has a good prognosis. As many as 60 to 70 percent of people treated for this form of the disease are completely cured of the cancer. Even before treatment many individuals diagnosed with localized alveolar cell carcinoma do not experience any palpable symptoms or only incur minimal symptoms. Alveolar cell carcinoma also occurs, however, in a diffuse form that is associated with a significantly bleaker prospect of recovery, especially if it has metastasized to distant areas.

Alveolar Cell Carcinoma at 40x Magnification - The progression of alveolar cell carcinoma can be very slow, and patients with the disease often have a better prognosis than people with other kinds of lung cancer.

Alveolar Cell Carcinoma at 10x Magnification - Alveolar cell carcinoma patients with diffuse pulmonary involvement often experience marked symptoms, such as the production of copious sputum, dyspnea, chest pain, and a chronic cough.