Comparison of survival between lobectomy and trisegmentectomy for clinical stage T1c-2aN0M0 non-small cell lung cancer in the left upper segment of the lung.

Left upper trisegmentectomy is expected to be as curative as lobectomy for lung cancer because the left upper lobe is anatomically the same as the combined upper and middle lobes of the right lung and the procedure can provide a sufficient surgical margin. In the present multicenter study, we compared the results of trisegmentectomy and lobectomy in patients with clinical stage T1c-2aN0M0 left upper lung cancer. We retrospectively analyzed the outcomes of patients with clinical stage T1c-2aN0M0 lung cancer in the left upper segment who underwent lobectomy or trisegmentectomy between January 2006 and June 2022. The trisegmentectomy group (S group) and lobectomy group (L group) comprised 33 and 132 patients, respectively. Comparisons of postoperative survival revealed no significant differences in overall survival (p = 0.761) or disease-free survival (p = 0.508) between the two groups. There were also no significant differences in survival after adjustment for clinical factors by Cox proportional hazards models and propensity score matching. Local recurrence was significantly more predominant in the S group than in the L group (p = 0.006). The S group had a worse postoperative survival than the L group when the tumor was located in anterior segment. Trisegmentectomy can provide an equivalent postoperative survive to lobectomy in patients with clinical stage T1c-2aN0M0 left upper segment lung cancer except in patients with tumor in anterior segment.