A Study of Surgical Resection for Pleomorphic Carcinoma of the Lung

Abstract

Pleomorphic carcinoma of the lung is a rare histologic type. It was proposed in the third edition of the 1999 WHO histologic classification of lung tumors. It is non-small cell lung carcinoma and at least more than 10% of the tumor comprises spindle and/or giant cells which are components of sarcoma. It is believed to carry poor prognosis. We made a study of 15 cases diagnosed as pleomorphic carcinoma of the lung among 389 cases operated on for lung cancer in our hospital between October 2007 and March 2014. The male-to-female ratio was 12 to three. The median age was 65 years, ranging from 54 to 83. Recurrence was noted in ten out of the 15 patients, and six of the ten patients died of this disease. The median time from the operation to the recurrence was 107 days, ranging from 17 to 301 days, in the ten recurrence patients. Nine out of the ten patients experienced recurrence within 6 months after the operation. Two patients have been disease-free for more than two years. One of them had locally advanced carcinoma, and in all two patients, lymph nodes have not been involved.
Although pleomorphic carcinoma of the lung is a tumor with poor prognosis, there are some cases in which even locally advanced pleomorphic carcinoma can be expected to have favorable prognosis as long as lymph node metastasis is negative.