Surgery as primary treatment for limited disease small cell lung cancer: Time to re-evaluate

Abstract

7719 Background: Chemoradiation is considered the gold standard for the management of limited disease (LD) small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Surgery has been abandoned due to poor overall survival, but many small series report good results with selected extremely limited disease (in one study without adjuvant treatment). Controversy remains if and when surgery should be considered as a primary modality. We sought to determine the survival and impact of pathologic staging in patients after complete resection of SCLC and the prognostic impact of pathologic stage. Methods: A retrospective review was undertaken of patients who underwent surgery between 1980 and 2003. Patients were staged according to the 6th UICC revision, actuarial survival estimated with Kaplan Meier methods and comparisons were undertaken using Cox regression. Results: We identified 51 patients who underwent complete resection with systematic nodal dissection for SCLC. The mean age (SD) was 61 (11) years and 37 (73%) were men. Complete staging information was available in 47, listed by stage with IA (n=6), IB (n=10), IIA (n=5), IIB (n=15), IIIA (n=10), IIIB (n=1). The median time to follow up (1st to 3rd quartile) was 4.5 (1.3 to 11.9) years with an overall survival (95% CI) at 1 and 5 years of 82% (72, 93) and 61% (48, 76). There were no clear differences in the outcome of patients in T categories 1 and 2 (P=0.411) with good overall results in patients across the spectrum of nodal disease from N0 to N2 (P=0.281). Conclusions: This study shows excellent survival for stage I to III patients who underwent lung resection with complete nodal resection for SCLC. These results, in an era of improved pre-operative and intra-operative staging, suggests that TNM staging is relevant in extremely limited disease SCLC and suggest that the role of surgery in such cases should be re- evaluated. No significant financial relationships to disclose.