[Cerebral metastasis disclosing primary bronchogenic cancers]

We report the cases of 37 patients with carcinoma of the lung revealed by brain metastases. The most frequent clinical manifestation was focal neurological symptoms associated with headache and vomiting in 50% of the cases. X-ray films of the chest were abnormal in 34 patients. At the time of diagnosis 11 patients also presented with extra-cerebral metastases. The histological type of the primary lung tumor was obtained by examination of the thorax in 32 cases and in 5 cases from brain or lymph node metastases: 11 patients had small-cell lung carcinoma and 26 had non small-cell lung carcinoma. The overall actuarial median survival was 4.5 months, irrespective of the histological type. The group of 20 patients who underwent neurosurgery had a longer median survival (10 months versus 4.5, p < 0.05), and in the subgroup where brain and lung resections were combined the median survival was even longer (13 months). Cerebral relapses occurred in 12 patients: in 7 out of 15 patients with brain surgery but without adjuvant brain radiotherapy, and in 5 out of 16 patients with brain radiotherapy without neurosurgery. No cerebral relapse was observed in the group of 5 patients who had complete resection followed by radiotherapy of the brain. This demonstrated a clear benefit from postoperative radiotherapy. Conventional chemotherapy induced objective responses only in the small-cell carcinoma group and could be too toxic when combined with simultaneous radiotherapy, but it proved a useful adjuvant treatment in patients with radiotherapy of the brain.