[Surgical treatment and result for metastatic pulmonary tumor: comparison between sarcoma and carcinoma]

Purpose of this study is to estimate the effectiveness of surgical treatment for metastatic pulmonary tumor by comparing sarcoma with carcinoma. There ware 43 cases and 64 operations of metastatic pulmonary tumor from 1981 to 1995 in Tottori university hospital. When we compared the background factors between sarcoma and carcinoma, there were significant differences in age, numbers of metastatic tumor and times of operation. Patients of sarcoma were much younger and had more number of metastatic tumor and more times of operation than those of carcinoma. Long term results after operation were 50.8% at 5 years and 44.4% at 10 years survival rate in all cases. The 5 year survival rate of sarcoma (38.1%) had a tendency of worse result than that of carcinoma (57.3%). Important factors that influence the post operative long term result were more numbers of pulmonary metastasis and more times of operation in sarcoma. On the other hand, because cases of carcinoma included many low grade malignancies in the group of multiple metastasis, the postoperative result of multiple metastasis became relatively better in our study.