Abstract
Introduction The application of PET/CT directly improved treatment choice and management in 25% of non-small cell lung cancer patients and 29% of small cell lung cancer patients. However, the long-term outcome of altering the management of these patients remains unclear. The aim of this study was to compare the 5-year overall survival rates of two groups of clinical stage I lung cancer patients: those who received PET/CT and those who did not.Methods Data were obtained from the Taiwan Society of Cancer Registry. There were 6,587 clinical stage I lung cancer patients analyzed between 2009 and 2014 in this retrospective study. We performed propensity matching to reduce the bias; it resulted in both groups having 2,649 patients. We measured the 1, 3, and 5-year survival rates of all clinical stage I lung cancer patients and the survival rates of pathological I, II and III lung cancer patients and compared the survival rates between clinical stage I lung cancer patients with PET/CT scans and patients without PET/CT scans.Results The 1, 3, and 5-year survival rates of all clinical stage I lung cancer patients are 97.2%, 88.2% and 79.0%, respectively. The 1, 3, and 5-year survival rates are 97.0%, 88.2% and 79.8% in the PET/CT group and 97.5%, 88.1% and 78.2% in the no PET/CT group; there was no statistical difference (p= 0.6528).Conclusion Although stage I lung cancer patients who received PET/CT had their management strategies modified and avoided any unnecessary thoracotomies, our data showed that there was no 5-year survival benefit for these patients.
Incidence of occult pN2 disease following resection and mediastinal lymph node dissection in clinical stage I lung cancer patients
