LONG TERM FOLLOW-UP IN SURGICAL STAGE I NON-SMALL CELL LUNG CANCER - A SINGLE CENTER EXPERIENCE

Lung cancer has a high mortality rate with an overall survival of 18% at 5 years. Surgical treatment is the gold standard for early stages and is associated with high rates of resolution with a 5-year survival of 80% reported in large studies.

To determinethe survival of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in stage IA (T1N0M0) undergoing surgical treatment with curative intent in our center.

We performed a retrospective review of the clinical records of all patients with pathological stage T1a-c N0 (stage I) who underwent thoracic surgery with curative intent from 2010 and 2017 in our center. Overall survival and lung cancer-specific survival was estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method.

87 patients (54 men and 33 women) with a median age of 66 years (range 36 to 83 years) were included. Lobectomy with systematic lymph node dissection was performed in 67 patients (77%). Adenocarcinoma was the predominant histological subtype (n=69; 79%). Overall survival at 5th years was 86,7%. Patients submitted to limited resection (segmentectomy or wedge resection) had lower overall survival compared to those submitted to lobectomy (66,4% vs 88,7%; p=0.008).

Our results show a high 5-year overall survival rate, in agreement with results from larger series studies. Lung cancer screening, although not yet widely implemented, has been shown to reduce mortality associated with lung cancer. These results reinforce the importance of screening programs for specific populations in order to identify patients in early stages and improve overall survival.