From 1972 to 1981, 282 patients with stage III carcinoma of the lung were treated at our institution. The condition of 113 was considered inoperable at diagnosis. Surgery was performed in the remaining 169 patients, of which 51 underwent curative resection, 64 noncurative resection and 54 exploratory thoracotomy. The majority of patients who underwent surgical resection received chemotherapy or radiotherapy or combined radiotherapy and chemotherapy as postoperative adjuvant treatment. We analyzed the survival rate in patients with resected stage III carcinoma according to surgical curability, TN subsets and cell types and compared survival with that of nonresectable patients.
1) The survival rate for all resected patients was 18.3% at 3 years and 11.3% at 5 years. In curative resection, the survival rate was 40.8% at 3 years and 30.6% at 5 years. On the other hand, the survival rate in patients with noncurative resection was markedly poor, resulting in 6.7% at 3 years and 0% at 5 years with a median survival time (MST) of 14 months. The MST in this group was similar to that in patients with exploratory thoracotomy (MST, 12 months) and inoperable carcinoma (MST, 13 months).
2) In patients with complete resection, the 5-year survival for T
3 N
0-1 disease was better than that for T
1-2 N
2 disease (47.7% vs 24.7%). The survival for T
3 N
2 disease, however, was disastrous and all patients died within 2 years after surgery. In patients with noncurative resection, the MST of 28 months for T3 No.1 disease was superior to that of patients with mediastinal lymph node metastases.
3) The 5-year survival for squamous cell carcinoma was better than that for adenocarcinoma (39.6% vs 21.8%). However, this tendency was observed only in patients with complete resection.
In conclusion, we consider that radical lung resection can be indicated in stage III carcinoma if curative resection is expected. However, for patients with T
3 N
2 disease, we cannot expect long-term survival even if the tumor is resected completely.
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