Surgical treatment is an effective approach for patients with synchronous multiple primary lung cancers

The detection rate of synchronous multiple primary lung cancers (SMPLC) showed an increasing trend year by year. In an attempt to identify the optimal treatment strategy for SMPLC, we retrospectively analyzed our surgical treatment outcomes of a series of patients with SMPLC.

A total of 43 SMPLC patients who met the modified Martini-Melamed criteria and with clinical data retained between November 2012 and July 2016 underwent complete resection without any preoperative induction therapy at the Department of Thoracic Surgery, Shandong Provincial Hospital. The relationships between gender, age, family history of cancer, the number of tumors, the location of tumors, tumor size, tumor histology, regional lymph node metastasis, type of surgery, pathological stage, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation, mortality, and survival were further analyzed.

Among the 43 patients, 29 (67.4%) patients had ipsilateral tumors, whereas 14 (32.6%) patients had contralateral tumors. Nine patients with contralateral tumors underwent one-stage surgical treatment, with mean postoperative hospitalization days of 9.8. EGFR mutations were detected in 5 patients with synchronous multiple primary lung adenocarcinomas (SMPLA) for each lesion independently. The results showed different tumors in the same patient could carry different EGFR mutations. The 1- and 3-year overall survival (OS) rates were 97.0% and 76.7%, respectively. Larger maximal tumor dimension (P = 0.015), advanced pN stage (P = 0.002), advanced pT stage (P = 0.046), advanced TNM stage (P = 0.013), and postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy (P = 0.025) were correlated with poor OS.

SMPLC could be considered to be a local disease rather than the systemic disease. Surgical treatment is an effective approach for patients with SMPLC. Mutational status of EGFR could be used as a diagnostic criterion, especially in patients with SMPLA.