Diagnosis and treatment of stage-III peripheral squamous cell carcinoma of right upper lung

During a 12-year period, 44 patients were surgically treated for stage-III peripheral squamous cell carcinoma of the right upper lobe. The mean time from the discovery of the shadow in the right upper lobe to the confirmation of the diagnosis was 2 months. All patients underwent the resection of the right upper lobe with the dissection of the right mediastinal lymph nodes, among them, 4 patients had sleeve lobectomy of the right upper lobe. P-TNM staging: 23 cases were in stage-IIIa, 21 cases in stage-IIIb. The frequency of the postoperative complications was 20.4% (9/44 cases). The 1-year survival rate of all patients was 61% (27/44 cases). None of stage-IIIb patients lived longer than 3 years. The postoperative 3- and 5-year survival rates of stage-IIIa cases were 65.2% (15/23 cases) and 21.7% (5/23 cases) respectively. In this article, the patients' clinical features, the causes of delayed-diagnosis, the operative and postoperative management were discussed. We suggest that the stage-IIIa patients should be given surgical treatment, whereas, for the patients of stage-IIIb, palliative operation was given just for the purpose of reliving the symptoms.