Abstract
In order to evaluate the effect of therapy on non-measurable and unresectable lung cancer, bronchoscopic examinations were performed in 36 cases with lung cancer before and after therapies. The endoscopic findings were analyzed in terms of the degree of stenosis, the depth and the longitudinal extent of the cancer lesion. Stenosis disappeared in eight of thirty-five cases after therapy. The lesion in the epithelial layer, subepithelial layer and extramuscular layer disappeared in 9, 3 and 6 cases after treatment, respectively. There was a correlation between the disappearance of epithelial involvement and prognosis. We scored the bronchoscopic findings of the cancer lesion according to the depth and the longitudinal extent of the lesion. The effects of therapy were classified into three groups ; 14 improvement, 8 no change and 14 progressive disease. There was a significant correlation between the improvement of lesions in the epithelial layer and the prognosis of the patient, especially in the primary mucosal type of lung cancer. We conclude that scoring bronchoscopic findings is useful not only to evaluate the effects of therapy objectively but also to predict the prognosis of lung cancer cases in which it is difficult to assess the tumor extent by conventional chest roentgenograms.
