Background: Brain is one of the common sites of metastasis in . patients with lung cancer.This is more likely to be present in  cases with small cell lung cancer SCLC than those with non-small cell lung cancer NSCLC

Objective: To estimate the incidence of silent brain metastasis in patients with NSCLC clinically stages II,III and IV at presentation

   :Patients and methods

A prospective study was conducted during the period from July 2012 to January 2016 for 942 patients presented in Sohag University Clinical Oncology Department, Sohag Cancer Center and  Sohag Health Insurance. All of them had histopathological prove of NSCLC and contrast-enhanced conventional magnetic resonance imaging MRI of the brain was done for all patients at presentation

Results

Seventy-six percent of patients were male and twenty-four were female. Seventy-eight percent of patients were in the age group of 40-60 years. 362 patients 38.4% had brain metastasis at time of their presentation. All those diagnosed to have brain metastasis received palliative whole brain irradiation and 20 patients received further local treatment directed to the metastatic brain deposits. Surgical resection of brain metastatis was done for 8 patients and conformal radiotherapy boost for 12 patients

    Conclusion

  NSCLِC is  one of the common causes of brain metastasis. Presentation with silent brain metastasis is not an uncommon occurrence. So MRI brain should be routinely used for the evaluation of  patients with NSCLC even in the abscence of symptoms or signs of brain metastasis which help to start brain directed therapy earlier