[Survival Analysis of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer in Patients aged 70 and over.]

With a trend of worldwide increasing incidence of elderly population, more and more people pay close attention to diseases in the elderly. Lung cancer is a typical disease of the elderly patients. Around one- third of all patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are over the age of 70. Many authors use the age 70 to define the elderly patients in lung cancer. The objective of this study is to evaluate the survival of patients older than 70 with NSCLC and explore the independent prognostic factors in this group of patients.

148 elderly patients with NSCLC were reviewed. All the potential prognostic factors, including sex, age, smoke, symptoms, pathological types, clinical stage, ECOG performance status, complication, focus resection, radiotherapy and chemotherapy were analyzed by COX regression in SPSS 13.0 software.

After 5-168 months follow-up, 119 patients died, the overall survival rate was 19.6%. 1,2,3,5-year survival rates were 43.2%, 19.0%,9.0% and 5.4% respectively. Median survival time (MST) was 9.29 moths. COX regression showed clinical stage(P =0.002), ECOG performance status(P =0.000), focus resection(P =0.012) and radiotherapy of primary site(P =0.012) were the independent prognostic factors.

The elderly patients with NSCLC in early stage and good performance status tend to have longer life expectance, whereas resection and radiotherapy of primary site can prolong the survival time (P <0.05).