Abstract
The most important end point in the evaluation of lung cancer surgery is “survival”. However, there is no uniform and acceptable definition of “death from other diseases” in Japan in the calculation of survival rates.
An investigation of cases we treated indicated that more than half the deaths attributable to other diseases occurred within 2 years of surgery, that mortality by other diseases was significantly higher in those who underwent multiple organ resection and in those in stage Mb. Furthermore, respiratory diseases which are not ranked highas a cause of death in Japanese people accounted for a much higher proportion in those whose cause of death was assessed as attributable to other diseases. Those results suggest that the primary disease and subsequent surgery are somewhat related to “death from other diseases”. When death from other diseases is included in the calculation of survival rate of those who underwent surgery, there was a significant difference in the result. Accordingly, for a reliable assessment of the lung cancer surgery as well as for an objective comparison of results with those of other reports, it is considered necessary to calculate survival rates with reference to all deaths including surgery-related deaths and deaths from other diseases.
