Clinical experience in staging of lung cancer at Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.

Staging of lung cancer needs an accurate diagnostic programme resulting in therapeutic and prognostic consequences. A modern, articulate flow-chart is presented and discussed. As a result, the rate of exploratory thoracotomy was reduced from 15.1% in 1988 to 2.1% in 1997 and the rate of resectability raised up to 30%. Preoperative over-staging was found in about 25% and the same value for understaging. Looking to the N-values, there was concordance of clinical and postoperative data in 61.9% of cases.