[Criteria of limited operation for bronchial carcinoid]

The purpose of this study is to establish criteria of limited operation for bronchial carcinoid. Ten cases surgically treated in our hospital and 47 cases reported in Japan from 1981 to 1992 were examined. Thirty-nine cases had typical carcinoid tumor and 18 had atypical. Limited operation, such as pulmonary segmentectomy, wedge resection or partial resection, was performed in 12 cases. In these, all patients of typical type were alive except for a case died of other disease. However, two patients of atypical type died of distant metastasis of the tumor. No lymph node metastasis was revealed in all cases of typical type. On the contrary, in cases of atypical type, six had n1 and two had n2 disease. Moreover, two cases with n1 disease had pulmonary metastasis. Therefore, patients with typical bronchial carcinoid can be cured by limited operation, but radical operation should be indicated for atypical bronchial carcinoid.