[Prognosis of metastatic brain tumor from lung cancer with special reference to its stages]

An overview of treatment of brain metastasis from lung cancer in National Cancer Center is presented with respect to T and N categories in TNM classification. To know the rate of brain metastasis, CT scan on brain was performed for all the patients with lung cancer hospitalized for surgical treatment and revealed that 3 of 87 patients had brain metastasis without any neurological signs and symptoms. On the other hand, 105 out of 320 (32.8%) lung cancer patients who had taken CT scan for some reason from 1975-1983 in this hospital had shown the brain metastasis. Therefore, it should be memorized that only 3.4% was detected to have brain metastasis from the patients without any neurological signs and symptoms. Two hundred sixty-one patients with metastatic brain tumor from lung cancer were treated in 1963-1983 at National Cancer Center in Japan. Of these, 205 patients were evaluated for the median survival and the average survival according to various therapeutic modalities. Of this 205 patients, 123 had no operation with or without other treatment--chemotherapy or radiotherapy showed median survival of 3-5 months (range 2-25 months). Eighty-two had operation on brain metastasis with or without chemotherapy showed median survival of 6-11 months (range 2-112 months). Correlation between survival time and T and N categories in TNM classification at the diagnosis of lung cancer was studied and no remarkable difference was noted either in T or N categories in the average survival time and percent number of cases survived equal or more than 6 months.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)