[Prognostic assessment of the new UICC TNM classification for resected lung cancer]

To evaluated the new UICC TNM classification, we investigated the prognosis of patients who had resection of non-small cell lung cancer. A total of 670 patients with non-small cell lung cancer underwent complete resection and pathologic staging of the disease from 1987 to 1994. The survivals were calculated with Kaplan-Meier methods on the basis of overall deaths, and the survival curves were compared by Logrank test. The 5-year survival rates were 84.6% in stage I A (n = 187), 65.2% in stage I B (n = 177), 41.5% in stage IIA (n = 24), 46.7% in stage IIB (n = 100), 25.6% in stage IIIA (n = 139), 25.8% in stage IIIB and 0 in stage IV. There were significant differences in survival between stage I A and stage I B as well as between stage IIB and stage IIIA. However, there were no significant differences in survival between stage IIA and stage IIB, between stage IIIA and stage IIIB. No significant difference in survival was observed among patients with T1N1M0, T2N1M0 and T3N0M0 (43.9%). In stage IIIB, the patients with pm1 N2 disease (8.9%) had more poorly prognosis than the patients with pm1N0 disease (70.1%) and pm1N1 (38.9%) disease. We concluded that the dividing stage I into A and B categories and placing T3N0M0 in stage II and placing pm2 in stage IV were adequate. In the patients with satellite tumors within the primary lobe of the lung, we think that a new category depended on the N-category is necessary.