The role of surgery in stage I small-cell lung cancer: A national VA database analysis.

Abstract

e21109 Background: Historically, limited stage Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC) has been treated with concurrent chemoradiation (CRT). While current NCCN guidelines recommend consideration of lobectomy in node-negative cT1-T2 SCLC, real world data regarding the role of surgery in very limited SCLC is lacking. To our knowledge, only one retrospective study has evaluated the role of surgery in stage I SCLC. Methods: Data from the National VA Cancer Cube were compiled. A total of 1,028 patients with pathologically confirmed Stage I SCLC were studied. Only 661 patients that either received surgery or CRT were included. Interval-censored Weibull and Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to estimate median overall survival (OS) and hazard ratio (HR), respectively. Two survival curves were compared by a Wald test. Subset analysis was performed based on the location of the tumor in the upper vs lower lobe as delineated by ICD-10 codes C34.1 and C34.3. Results: Four-hundred and forty-two patients received concurrent CRT; while 219 underwent treatment that contained surgery (92 surgery only, 84 surgery/chemo, 39 surgery/chemo/radiation and 4 surgery/radiation). The median OS for the surgery-inclusive treatment was 3.87 years (95% CI 3.25-4.60) while median OS for the CRT cohort was 2.43 years (95% CI 2.15-2.72). HR of death for surgery-inclusive treatment when compared to CRT was 0.65 (95% CI 0.54-0.79; p < 0.001). Subset analysis based on the location of the tumor in upper lobe and lower lobe showed improved survival with surgery as compared to CRT regardless of the location. HR for upper lobe was 0.61 (95% CI 0.48-0.78; p < 0.001) and lower lobe 0.60 (95% CI 0.41-0.87; p = 0.007). Multivariable regression analysis accounting for age and ECOG-PS shows a HR 0.60 (95% CI 0.42-0.85; p = 0.004) favoring surgery. Conclusions: Surgery was used in less than a third of patients with stage I SCLC who received treatment. Surgery-inclusive multimodality treatment was associated with a longer overall survival as compared to chemoradiation, independent of age, performance status or tumor location. Our study supports a more expansive role for surgery in stage I SCLC.