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Analysis of unexpected small cell lung cancer following surgery as the primary treatment

  • Original Article – Clinical Oncology
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is considered a systemic disease and surgery is generally not recommended to treat it. High heterogeneity within the tumor and preoperative diagnostic capabilities can sometimes fail to identify SCLC correctly, leading to a subset of unexpected SCLC patients that are diagnosed only after pulmonary resections.

Methods

We retrospectively reviewed the clinical records of patients who were diagnosed as having SCLC only after surgery between 2008 and 2015 at a single institution.

Results

A total of 125 unexpected SCLC patients were identified, including those with pure (p-SCLC; n = 76, 60.8%) and combined (c-SCLC; n = 49, 39.2%) SCLC. Highly differential diagnoses were observed between pre- and postoperative tissue examinations. Sixty-nine (55.2%) patients with postoperatively pathological-proven SCLC, including 31 with p-SCLC and 38 with c-SCLC, were diagnosed preoperatively with poorly differentiated carcinoma (n = 23), squamous carcinoma (n = 14), adenocarcinoma (n = 10), malignant cells with necrosis (n = 10), large cell carcinoma (n = 8), or carcinoid (n = 4). Also, inconsistencies between the clinical (c-) and pathological (p-) stages were found in this cohort, which were less common in patients with preoperative PET examination than those without (24.4% vs. 43.8%; p = 0.032). Multivariable analyses showed that higher p-stage (hazards ratio (HR) = 1.7349, p = 0.0025), sub-lobar resection (HR = 1.9078, p = 0.0395), and a lack of prophylactic cranial irradiation treatment (PCI, HR = 0.3873, p = 0.0057) were unfavorable prognostic factors for overall survival.

Conclusion

Non-resection approaches reveal an inadequate diagnosis of SCLC. PET examination facilitates the evaluation of the clinical staging of SCLC. For unexpected SCLC undergoing resection, favorable outcomes can be achieved if radical resection and postoperative PCI are performed.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to Keke Yu and Jie Xing (Department of Pathology of Shanghai Chest Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University) for pathological re-assessment.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Haitang Yang and Jianlin Xu, contributed equally to the work and should be regarded as co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of General Thoracic Surgery, Inselspital University Hospital Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Haitang Yang & Shunqing Liang

  2. Department of BioMedical Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Haitang Yang & Shunqing Liang

  3. Graduate School for Cellular and Biochemical Sciences, University of Bern, 3010, Bern, Switzerland

    Haitang Yang & Shunqing Liang

  4. Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Shanghai Chest Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University, No. 241, West Huaihai Street, Xuhui District, Shanghai, 200030, China

    Jianlin Xu

  5. Department of Thoracic Surgery, Shanghai Chest Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University, No. 241, West Huaihai Street, Xuhui District, Shanghai, 200030, China

    Feng Yao & Heng Zhao

Authors
  1. Haitang Yang
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  2. Jianlin Xu
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  3. Feng Yao
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Correspondence to Heng Zhao.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study has been examined and approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee of Shanghai Chest.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Yang, H., Xu, J., Yao, F. et al. Analysis of unexpected small cell lung cancer following surgery as the primary treatment. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 144, 2441–2447 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-018-2766-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-018-2766-6

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