[Surgical treatment of lung cancer with carcinomatous pleuritis]

Carcinomatous pleuritis in patients with lung cancer is usually found to accompany frank malignant effusion and/or multiple pleural tumors and is associated with poor outcomes. The disease condition is now classified as stage IV (M1a) in the present TNM staging system and is generally considered to be a contraindication for surgical resection. However, this condition is sometimes discovered, with or without a small amount of pleural effusion, at thoracotomy in patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer. The incidence was reported to be approximately 3%, and in such patients surgical treatment has been performed in some institutions. The surgical procedures employed are diverse, including limited resection, lobectomy, pneumonectomy, and extrapleural pneumonectomy. The median postoperative survival times and 5-year survival rates were reported to be 17-30 months and 13-24%, respectively. We performed extrapleural pneumonectomy in 23 patients from 1988 to 2012, and the median survival time and 5-year survival rate are 34 months and 34%, respectively. Among 12 patients with pathologic N0-1 disease, 6 patients are alive without disease 4 to 288 months after surgery, for a median survival time and 5-year survival rate of 126 months and 61%, respectively. Our results indicate that carefully selected patients with carcinomatous pleuritis may be candidates for curative extrapleural pneumonectomy.