Prognosis of patients with resected non-small cell lung cancer: impact of clinical and pathologic variables.

The objective of this study was to determine whether AJCC staging, supplemented by additional clinical and pathologic variables could identify a subpopulation of pathologically staged NSCLC patients who had been resected for cure with a low risk (<20%) of 5-year disease specific mortality. The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry was analyzed to identify and evaluate the disease specific 5-year mortality of 17,130 patients with resected and pathologically defined Stage I-IIIA disease initially diagnosed from 1988 to 1997. The analyses showed that American Joint Commission on Cancer (AJCC) T and N defined stage Stage I-IIIA subgroups had approximately a 30, 60, and 75% 5-year disease specific mortality, respectively. The 5,366 Stage IA patients were identified as having a 5-year disease specific mortality of 25%. Further multivariate analyses of Stage IA cases showed predictors of favorable outcome to be tumor size (< 10 mm), histologic grade (well differentiated), and histologic subtype (bronchoalveolar cell). Subgroups identified with two or all three of these additional features had an approximately 10% 5-year lung cancer specific mortality. Although nearly all patient subgroups with Stages I-IIIA resected and pathologically staged NSCLC have substantial (>20%) risk of death from their cancer within 5 years of diagnosis, for Stage IA patients additional information (tumor size, histologic grade, and histologic subtype) allows additional refinement in prognostic estimates and identification of some low risk subgroups.