[Surgery for stage III lung cancer]

The standard treatment for superior sulcus tumor has been considered preoperative radiotherapy followed by surgery since Paulson proposed. Excellent results of preoperative chemo-radiotherapy reported will be change the standard therapy for superior sulcus tumor. The results of combined resection of neighboring organs for lung cancer have been reported recent a couple of decades. Those results makes clear the limit of improvement of survival after surgery alone for IIIA lung cancer. Multi-disciplinaly treatment including surgery should be tried as clinical trials for IIIA lung cancer. The reports of surgery for IIIB lung cancer are limited number of patients and unstable results. A lot of pure surgical problems of surgery for IIIB lung cancer sill remain to be solved. We should strongly promote clinical trials including surgical approaches for locally advanced lung cancer.