Surgical treatment of bronchopulmonary carcinoid tumours

Based on histopathological characteristics bronchopulmonary carcinoid tumours can be divided into a typical and an atypical variant. Atypical carcinoid tumours often have regional lymph node metastases. A differentiation between the two types of tumours cannot be made preoperatively. A total of 23 patients underwent resectional therapy for carcinoid tumours of the lung. Eleven underwent pneumonectomy, eight patients lobectomy and three patients had bilobectomy. Segmental resection was performed in one patient. One patient died in the postoperative period. During the follow-up period, ranging from 5 to 22 years (median 11 years), neither local recurrences nor metastatic spread was observed. In eight patients the tumour was classified as the atypical variant. There was no correlation between the size of the tumour and the presence of regional lymph node metastases. All tumours with lymph node metastases were classified as atypical carcinoids. As in other studies, our data suggest that treatment based on standard resectional procedures is to be preferred for bronchopulmonary carcinoids since a preoperative distinction between the typical and atypical variants is as yet not possible.