Association of delays in time to surgery for resectable stage IIIA non-small cell lung cancer with survival.
e20056 Background: Delay in time to surgery (TTS) for early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) may impact survival; however the effect of delayed TTS for patients with stage IIIA NSCLC is unclear. Methods: Patients with pathologic stage IIIA NSCLC who underwent curative intent resection with documented days from diagnosis to definitive surgery were identified in the National Cancer Database from 2004 to 2012. Patients with surgery on the day of diagnosis or more than 180 days after diagnosis, and those who received pre-operative systemic or radiation therapy were excluded. Association between TTS as a continuous variable by week and month was assessed by cox regression models. Multivariate cox proportional hazard models estimated the mortality risk associated with TTS as a continuous variable with age, sex, race, comorbidity score, pathologic T and N stage. Overall survival (OS) between immediate and delayed groups was estimated by Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank test. Results: Of patients with NSCLC who underwent definitive resection, 16,033 were confirmed to be pathologic stage IIIA. Median follow-up was 25 months, and 61% of patients died with a median survival of 32 months. Median time from diagnosis to surgery was 37 days. Five-year OS for patients with surgery in the first 37 days was 34.7%, compared to 30.1% in patients who had surgery after the first 37 days (p < 0.001). When grouped by increasing weeks of delay, the earliest significant survival difference was noted in patients resected within three weeks of diagnosis, with 5-yr OS of 35.2%, compared to 31.5% for patients treated more than three weeks later (p = 0.002). For each week of additional TTS, the associated risk of mortality increased by 1.2% (HR 1.012, 95% CI 1.007-1.016, p < 0.001) and 5.0% for each month of delay (HR 1.046, 95% CI 1.026-1.065, p < 0.001). In the multivariate model accounting for confounders, the mortality risk associated with delay to surgery increased by 0.75% with each additional week (HR 1.0075, 95% CI 1.003-1.012, p = 0.002). Conclusions: This analysis suggests that delays in time to curative intent resection for patients with stage IIIA NSCLC decreases the 5-year OS and thus the likelihood of cure.