Abstract
Although it is well known that the prognosis of early hilar type lung cancer is relatively good, there are also some non-early stage hilar type lung cancer cases that have good prognoses. We therefore, examined histologically 19 such cases to determine what factors were most important for determining prognosis.
The results showed that the most important prognostic factor was the N-factor rather than location or depth of invasion. Non-early stage I hilar type lung cancer with only intrapulmonary lymph node metastasis had good prognosis. Therefore, we designated the criteria of curatively treatable hilar type lung cancer as follows; 1. primary site localized as far as the 4th order bronchi, 2. invasion of tumor confined to within peribronchial tissue or lung parenchyma 10mm from the bronchial adventitia, 3. metastasis limited to the intrapulmonary region, 4. no cancer invasion at the resected margine of bronchi.
The prognosis of hilar type lung cancer which satisfied all the above, was as good as that of early stage hilar type lung cancer.
