Impact of whole tumor size in part-solid non-small cell lung cancer

Abstract

In the recent issue of Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Hattori et al . reported the impact of the maximum tumor size and solid component size on the prognosis of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (1). They evaluated 1,181 surgically resected cases of clinical N0 M0 NSCLC. The patients were divided into three groups according to the radiologically determined consolidation tumor ratio (CTR): the pure ground-glass opacity (GGO) group (CTR =0; n=168), the part-solid (0<CTR<1; n=448) group and the solid (CTR =1; n=565) group. The authors reported that the tumor size had a significantly impact on the 5-year overall survival (OS) of patients with radiologically solid tumors (≤20 mm, 83%; 21–30 mm, 75.4%; 31–50 mm, 56.2%; ≥51 mm, 45.3%; P<0.0001). In contrast, the tumor size did not influence the 5-year OS of patients with radiologically pure GGOs (100%, regardless of the tumor size) or part-solid tumors (≤20 mm, 97.7%; 21–30 mm, 94.6%; 31–50 mm, 93.4%; P=0.1028). In addition, the size of the solid component and CTR were not associated with OS in patients with part-solid tumor. They therefore concluded that the impact of maximum tumor size should only be applied to radiologically solid lung cancer (1).