Original Articles: General ThoracicPrognostic value of bronchiolo-alveolar carcinoma component of small lung adenocarcinoma
Section snippets
Patients and methods
From 1973 through 1997, 1590 lung cancer patients underwent surgical resection of the lung at our institute, Osaka Medical Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases in Japan. Of these, the records of 206 patients (13%) with small peripheral lung adenocarcinoma, 2 cm or less in maximum dimension on resection, were studied retrospectively. The mean patient age was 59.9 years, and the male to female ratio was 1.26 (115 to 91). The cases were classified according to the TNM classification and
Results
Of the 206 patients with small peripheral lung adenocarcinoma, 40 patients (19%) had tumors of type I, 75 (36%) of type II, 74 (36%) of type III, and 17 (8%) of type IV. Table 1shows a summary of the association between each type and the clinicopathological factors.
The patients with less severe BAC, for example those with type I and II, included a large number of males (p = 0.029) and smokers (p = 0.0008). Also, such patients showed significantly more aggressive nodal involvement (p < 0.0001);
Comment
Based on the results using the proposed system for classifying small peripheral lung adenocarcinoma, tumors with less BAC, namely types I and II showed significantly more aggressive nodal involvement (p < 0.0001). The incidence of node-positive cases amounted to 38% for type I and 35% for type II, as opposed to just 9% for type III, and interestingly 0% for type IV. Nevertheless, there was a problem regarding the background of patients in our series, as patients underwent various types of
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Cancer Research (9-18) from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Japan.
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2014, Radiologic Clinics of North AmericaRisk factors for tumor recurrence in patients with early-stage (stage I and II) non-small cell lung cancer: Patient selection criteria for adjuvant chemotherapy according to the seventh edition TNM classification
2011, ChestCitation Excerpt :Adenocarcinomas show a wide variety of histologic features, including bronchioloalveolar carcinoma (BAC), acinar, papillary, and solid adenocarcinoma.21 Among these adenocarcinoma histologic subtypes, BAC is a well-differentiated subtype and reported to be associated with a favorable prognosis.29–31 The number of never smokers with early-stage BAC subtype has recently increased in Japan.