Purpose: We studied the clinicopathological features of pulmonary neuroendocrine tumors resected in our department.
Patients and Methods: The medical records of 41 patients who underwent surgery from 2000 to 2013 were reviewed retrospectively; 9 cases of typical carcinoid (TCA), 17 cases of large-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC), and 15 cases of small-cell lung carcinoma (SCLC).
Results: Patients with TCA were significantly younger and included more women and fewer smokers compared with the other two histological types. Most patients with LCNEC or SCLC were heavy smokers and more than 67 years old; more than 80% were male. Significant differences in surgical methods were found for these histological types; limited lung resection was performed for 6 patients (19%) with LCNEC or SCLC, reflecting their poor pulmonary function due to long-term smoking. In contrast, resections larger than lobectomy or bronchoplasty were performed for TCA. The 5-year recurrence-free survival (RFS) rates for LCNEC and SCLC patients were 48.5% and 44.0%, respectively, suggesting no significant difference between them. All patients with TCA were free from recurrence. The 5-year overall survival rates for LCNEC and SCLC patients were 72.5% and 40.4%, respectively. Although the survival rate of LCNEC patients was higher than that of SCLC patients, there was no significant statistical difference. In LCNEC, the 5-year RFS rate for patients who received postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy was 83.3% compared with 21.8% in patients who did not receive chemotherapy, suggesting a better outcome for the chemotherapy group in spite of no statistical significance.
Conclusions: Development of LCNEC and SCLC, but not TCA, was closely associated with tobacco smoking. Postsurgical survival in LCNEC and SCLC was poor. Adjuvant chemotherapy for preventing recurrence of LCNEC was suggested to be useful.

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