[Advances in Lymph Node Metastasis and Lymph Node Dissection 
in Early Non-small Cell Lung Cancer]

Lung cancer is the malignant tumor with the highest morbidity and mortality in China. Non-small cell lung cancer is the main pathological type. Lymph node metastasis is the most common and primary metastatic pathway in non-small cell lung cancer. Acknowledged as the major factor determining tumor staging and prognosis. Unfortunately, it's presently hard to make an accurate preoperative judgment on the lymph node metastasis of early stage non-small cell lung cancer. Consequently, there has been a long-standing controversy on lymph node sweeping for early stage non-small cell lung cancer, especially for those clinical stage I. The regularity of non-small cell lung cancer lymph node metastasis and the ways of lymph node sweeping will be reviewed in this paper.
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