• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.425-431
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• 1998

Purpose : We retrospectively analyzed the impact of subpleural lesions of early stage non-small cell lung cancer on the patterns of failure to support selection of postoperative adjuvant therapy. Methods and Materials : The study included 91 patients who underwent surgery for early stage non-small cell lung cancer at Dong-A University Hospital from Dec 1990 to Sep 1996. Twenty five patients were excluded due to postoperative mortality (four patients, 4.4$\%$) and stage III (21 patients). Of 66 patients, 22 patients were subpleural lesions (15 patients in stage I, and seven patients in stage II). Postoperative adjuvant radiation therapy was given to seven patients with T2Nl disease. The median follow-up duration was 29.5 months (range; 8-84 months). Results : The overall survival rate was 69.5$\%$ at 3 years. For all patients who presented with (22 patients) and without (44 patients) subpleural lesions, 3-year overall survival rates were 35.5$\%$ and 84.6$\%$, respectively (p=0.0017). For stage I patients who presented with (15 patients) and without (29 patients) subpleural lesions, 3-year overall survival rates were 33.1$\%$ and 92.3$\%$, respectively (p=0.001). For stage II patients who presented with (7 patients) and without (15 patients) subpleural lesions, 3-year overall survival rates were 53.3$\%$ and 45.7$\%$, respectively (p=0.911). For patients with T2N0 disease (34 patients) who presented with (11 patients) and without (23 patients) subpleural lesions, 3-year overall survival rates were 27.3$\%$ and 90.3$\%$, respectively (p=0.009). Conclusion : These observations suggest that the subpleural lesion play an important role as a prognostic factor for early stage non-small cell lung cancer. Especially for T2N0 disease, patients with subpleural lesions showed significantly lower survival rate than those without that.