[The postoperative survival in pulmonary carcinomas depending on the histological type and stage]

The prognostic significance of age, sex, location of the tumor in the various lobes, size, histological type, node metastases, local extent and stage has been studied in a series of 742 surgically resected lung carcinomas. The histological type was a very important prognostic factor: the highest survival was observed in epidermoid carcinomas, followed by adenocarcinomas, anaplastic large cell carcinomas, and anaplastic small cell carcinomas. The stage, as well, except for the adenocarcinoma, bore heavily on the prognosis; however, in small stage I tumours, the postoperative survival was independent from the histological type. The presence of lymph node metastases resulted in an extremely poor survival, except for the epidermoid carcinoma. The size of the tumours, excluding adenocarcinomas, was an important prognostic factor provided lymph node metastases were absent. No significant differences in survival according to the location in different lobes could be ascertained.