Lung microcytoma: a multidisciplinary therapeutic approach

This report is of 26 patients diagnosed with microcytoma of the lung in stages I, II, and IIIa. All patients received surgical treatment as well as postoperative chemoradiotherapy when indicated by stage. Mean survival rates were 16 months for stage 1, 10 months for stage II and 6 months for stage IIIa disease. For many years surgery was considered contraindicated in the treatment of pulmonary microcytoma. Now a multidisciplinary approach is being used in which surgery has a crucial role. Microcytoma of the lung has a poor prognosis due to its early metastasis and rapid growth. It is crucial to have early diagnosis and accurate, consistent staging as the basis for treatment. A review of literature shows that the use of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are all important in treatment of microcytoma. Chemotherapy is successfully utilized preoperatively to improve local control, decrease neoplastic mass, induce histological regression and as postoperative adjuvant therapy. Radiotherapy has been shown to be effective preoperatively to reduce local mass and prophylactically for cerebral metastasis. Surgery is crucial to irradicate the neoplastic mass, improve staging accuracy, decrease the possible selection of neoplastic clones resistant to postoperative therapy, decrease local recurrence and allow less aggressive chemoradiotherapy. We feel the most effective protocol for pulmonary microcytoma includes preoperative chemotherapy and radiotherapy when indicated followed by surgical intervention and finally successive adjuvant therapy. The limited number of our cases does not consent a statistically significative conclusion. Our data confirm the importance of the surgical procedure in stages I and II, where according also to other authors, the best results are obtained. Surgical indication in stage IIIa is still discussed due to precocius lymphnode dissemination that significantly affects long-term survival.