Small cell lung cancer I--III A: cytoreductive chemotherapy followed by resection with continuation of chemotherapy.

OBJECTIVES

To define the place for surgery in combined modality treatment of small cell lung cancer patients. The endpoint was: does complete resection reduce the risk of local failure?

METHODS

Between November 1981 and June 1996, 75 patients in stage I--III A, many of them with a bulky cN2 tumor at presentation, were exposed to VP-16 based cytoreductive chemotherapy. After three courses of induction treatment, 46 patients underwent thoracotomy and 35 of them had resection.

RESULTS

There were two sudden deaths (pulmonary embolism). No other complications were observed. In six cases (6/35 = 16%), no residual tumor was found in the resected specimen. Four weeks after surgery, chemotherapy was resumed. Three patients experienced local relapse (3/33), among them, the single patient with incomplete resection, and two other patients developed local and distant failure (2/33). Thus, the local relapse rate was 15% (5/33). Eight patients, mainly with chemotherapy induced surgicopathological complete remission (pCR) and with lymph nodes free of tumor in surgical specimens (pN0), are alive, tumor-free, at a median of 136 + months. Two patients died tumor-free at 65 and 147 months. One patient died of unrelated causes at 21 months with no evidence of disease at autopsy. The median survival in the cN0 + N1 subsets was 25.09 months, whereas in cN2 disease, this was 13.75 months. There were no long-term survivors among the patients with persistent N2 disease. The median survival in all 35 patients using the Kaplan--Meier method was 18 months; the 5-year tumor-free survival rate was 29% and the 10-year tumor-free survival rate was 23%.

CONCLUSIONS

Satisfactory local tumor control confirmed the assumption of the study. No residual tumor in the resected specimen (pCR) is the most favorable prognostic factor and determinant of long-term survival. Surgery should not be performed in the patients with persistent N2 disease.