2026 Volume 32 Issue 1 Article ID: oa.25-00242
Purpose: We investigated the clinical significance of lymphovascular invasion (LVI) in locally advanced lung adenocarcinoma after induction chemoradiotherapy (CRT).
Methods: We retrospectively reviewed patients with completely resected lung adenocarcinoma after induction CRT from 2007 to 2021 at our institution. We evaluated the effects of LVI on recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS).
Results: Fifty-six patients were included. The reasons for induction CRT were superior sulcus tumor (n = 11, 19.6%), direct invasion of other organs (n = 7, 12.5%), bulky N1 (n = 3, 5.4%), and N2 (n = 35, 62.5%). A pathological complete response was observed in 6 patients (10.7%). LVI was present in 14 patients (25.0%) and absent in 42 (75.0%). The LVI-positive group had significantly worse 5-year RFS (7.8% vs. 49.7%, p <0.001) and OS (35.2% vs. 73.5%, p = 0.003) than the LVI-negative group. Multivariate analysis revealed that LVI was a significant prognostic factor for both RFS (hazard ratio [HR], 3.91; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.64–9.32, p = 0.002) and OS (HR, 5.75; 95% CI, 1.92–17.20, p = 0.002).
Conclusions: LVI can be a poor prognostic factor and an important biomarker for assessing the effectiveness of multimodal treatment in lung adenocarcinoma.
