Prognosis of patients with resected non-small cell lung cancer: Impact of clinical and pathologic variables

The objective of this study was to determine whether AJCC staging, supplemented by additional clinical and pathologic variables could identify a subpopulation of pathologically staged NSCLC patients who had been resected for cure with a low risk (<20%) of 5-year disease specific mortality. The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry was analyzed to identify and evaluate the disease specific 5-year mortality of 17,130 patients with resected and pathologically defined Stage I-IIIA disease initially diagnosed from 1988 to 1997. The analyses showed that American Joint Commission on Cancer (AJCC) T and N defined stage Stage I-IIIA subgroups had approximately a 30, 60, and 75% 5-year disease specific mortality, respectively. The 5366 Stage IA patients were identified as having a 5-year disease specific mortality of 25%. Further multivariate analyses of Stage IA cases showed predictors of favorable outcome to be tumor size (<10 mm), histologic grade (well differentiated), and histologic subtype (bronchoalveolar cell). Subgroups identified with two or all three of these additional features had a similar to 10% 5-year lung cancer specific mortality. Although nearly at[ patient subgroups with Stages I-IIIA resected and pathologically staged NSCLC have substantial (>20%) risk of death from their cancer within 5 years of diagnosis, for Stage IA patients additional information (tumor size, histologic grade, and histologic subtype) allows additional refinement in prognostic estimates and identification of some low risk subgroups. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.