• Smart Media Journal
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.126-133
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• 2020

The treatment policy and prognosis are determined based on the final stage of lung cancer patients. The final stage of lung cancer patients is determined based on the T, N, and M stage classification table provided by the American Cancer Society (AJCC). However, the final stage of AJCC has limitations in its use for various fields such as patient treatment, prognosis and survival days prediction. In this paper, clustering algorithm which is one of non-supervised learning algorithms was assessed in order to check whether using only T, N, M stages with a data science method is effective for classifying the group of patients in the aspect of survival days. The final stage groups and T, N, M stage clustering groups of lung cancer patients were compared by using the cox proportional hazard model. It is confirmed that the accuracy of prediction of survival days with only T, N, M stages becomes higher than the accuracy with the final stages of patients. Especially, the accuracy of prediction of survival days with clustering of T, N, M stages improves when more or less clusters are analyzed than the seven clusters which is same to the number of final stage of AJCC.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.157-163
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• 2003

Traditionally, patients with stage IIIB non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have been con-sidered Inoperable due to the short-term survival rate of this disease. However, some recent papers have reported good surgical treatment results for T4 lesions in stage IIIB NSCLC. This study reports the results of stage IIIB NSCLC patients who underwent surgical treatment at our institute. Material and Method: This study includes 109 patients who were diagnosed with pathological stage IIIA lung cancer and 59 patients who were diagnosed with pathological stage IIIB at our institute between 1994 to December 2001. Patients who underwent neo-adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation therapy were excluded from this study. According to the TNM classification, 13 patients from stage IIIA were classified into T3N1, 12 into T1N2, 73 into T2N2 and 11 into T3N2. Stage IIIB patients consisted of 26 patients with T4N0, 18 with T4Nl, 14 with T4N2, and 1 with T4N3. Result: The 30-day mortality for stage IIIA and IIIB were 4.58% and 5.08% respectively. The overall survival rate at the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th year were 69.1%, 53.7%, 41.6%, and 30.7% respectively in stage IIIA and 68.8%, 55.6%, 42.9%, and 35.9% respectively in stage IIIB. Patients with satellite nodules in the same lobe & no Iymph node involvement had a survival rate of 53.9% in 3 years compared with 15.2% in patients with satellite nodules in the same lobe with Iymph node involvement. Conclusion: Surgical treatment is recommended for selected stage IIIB NSCLC patients (pathological N0 stage & completely resectable patients), particularly for patients with satellite nodules in the same lobe & no lymph node involvement.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.91-97
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• 2003

With the advent of stage-adapted multimodal regiments for esophageal malignancy, accurate staging has become of utmost importance. Endoscopic ultrasono graphy(EUS) i.: a diagnostic method for the local staging of esophageal cancer, in particular for T and N evaluation. The aim of this study was to examine the diagnostic efficacy of the EUS and to evaluate the relation between prognosis and EUS findings. Material and Method : We reexamined the cases of 88 consecuitive patients who underwent transthroacic esophagectomy and cervical esophagogastrostomy for esophageal cancer from January 1991 to July 2001 We compared EUS findings, histological results and outcomes. Result : There were 83 male(94.3%) and 5 female. Median age was 61.3 years old. Overall staging accuracy were 59.0% for T staging and 76.0% for N staging, In early T staging group, the accuracy was 74.9% except 74 stage. However significant differences were not found in the ability of EUS-determined T-stage and N-Stage to predict survival. Multivariate analysis showed EUS-stage to predict survival. Conclusion : EUS provides a high degree of accuracy in assessing both T and N parameters in staging esophagal cancer. EUS should be performed in all patients with esophageal cancer, not only for staging before therapy, but also as a valuable method of determining prognosis.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.269-275
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• 2003

Purpose: To evaluate the results of radiation management on recurrence, survival and prognostic factors of patients with nasopharyngeal cancer Materials and Methods: Forty-nine patients, treated for nasopharyngeal cancer by radiotherapy between January 1984 and June 2000, were retrospectively studied. All patients were followed up for at least 2.5 years. Their median age was 52 years (range 17$\~$78). The histological types were 21 squamous cell carcinoma, 25 undifferentiated carcinoma, and 3 adenoid cystic carcinoma. The tumor stages were as follows: T1 in 14 patients, T2 in 24, T3 in 3, and T4 in 8, and N0 in 17 patients, Nl in 15, N2 in 4 and N3 in 13. Stages I, IIa, IIb ,III, IV and IVb were 4, 7, 12, 5, 8, and 13 patients respectively. Radiation doses of 58$\~$70 Gy (median 68.7 Gy) were given to the nasopahryngeal and involved lymphatic areas and of 46 $\~$ 50 Gy to the uninvolved neck areas. Results: The overall 5 and 10-year actuarial and disease free survival rates were 54.53$\%$ and 47$\%$ and 55.7$\%$ and 45.3$\%$, respectively The overall five-year survival rates were 100$\%$ in stage I , 80$\%$ in stage IIa, 59.5$\%$ in stage IIIb, 40$\%$ in stage III, and 42.2$\%$ in stage IV tumors. Twenty-three patients fatted either loco-regionally or distantly. Incidences of local failure, regional failure and distant metastasis for the first failure were 20.4$\%$, 8.2$\%$ and 20.4$\%$, respectively. Local recurrences were 4.3$\%$ in T1, 12.5$\%$ in T2, 0$\%$ in T3, and 62.5$\%$ in T4 lesions. Distant metastasis was seen in 41.2$\%$ of N2-3 lesions. Fifty percent of local recurrence appeared within 2 years of treatment at the primary lesion, whereas 70$\%$ of distant metastasis appeared within 2 years following treatment. Young age, female, early T stage, N0 stage; and poorly differentiated carcinoma were all related with good survival. However only stage showed statistically significance. Conclusionn: Based on the results of this study, radiation therapy to nasopharyngeal cancer showed high local recurrence in T4 and increased metastasis in N2-3 lesions. To improve local failure, further radiation doses, such as stereotactic radiation or IMRT radiation, are necessary especially in T4 lesions. The high incidence of distant metastasis in positive lymph node patients, indicates that combined radiation and effective chemotherapeutic agents with appropriated schedule are necessary.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.177-185
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• 2009

Purpose: Preoperative clinical staging of gastric cancer is very important for determining the treatment plans and predicting the prognosis. The previous reports regarding the accuracy of computed tomography or endoscopic ultrasound for the preoperative staging of gastric cancer have shown various outcomes. We analyzed the diagnostic performance of CT and EUS, which are important staging tools for the staging of TN gastric cancer. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 1,174 patients who underwent gastrectomy for gastric cancer at Seoul National University Bundang Hostpital from May, 2003 to December, 2007. We derived the Kappa value to examine the agreement of the preoperative staging obtained from CT and EUS with the pathological staging. Results: The mean age of the 1,174 patients was $59.31{\pm}11.98$ years. Six hundred thirty seven patients had early gastric cancer and 536 had advanced gastric cancer. The diagnostic performance between CT and EUS for the T staging showed no significant difference between CT and EUS for the kappa values. The kappa values showed moderate agreement at 0.4039 (P=0.021) and 0.4201 (P=0.026), respectively. This suggests that there is no difference between the two examinations for the overall T staging. Analysis of the discrimination of mucosal and submucosal lesions with EUS showed an accuracy of 58.92% and a Kappa value of 0.206 (P<0.001), suggesting fair agreement and a lower diagnostic performance than expected. To differentiate lesions with stages higher than or equal to T2 or T3 from the lesion with stages lower than T2 or T3, respectively, adoption of the higher stage from the CT staging or the EUS staging showed a larger AUC of 0.84 than that from either stage alone. The CT-derived node stage had the higher diagnostic performance (68.55%) than that of the EUS-derived node stage (60.82%) for the node staging. Conclusion: The CT-derived stage and EUS-derived stage showed comparable results for determining the T stage of gastric cancer. Yet the higher stage of the two stages from CT and EUS most accurately discriminated between those lesions with stages higher than T2 and those lesions with stages lower than T2.

• 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.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.616-623
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• 1994

Objectives: Careful evaluation about mediastinal involvement is important in the management of patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Invasive staging procedure such as mediastinoscopy is advocated because of the unreliability of noninvasive staging methods such as CT, MRI. We compared differences between pre- and postoperative staging in non-small cell lung cancer without lymphadenopathy on CT scan and investigated the methods for more accurate preoperative staging. Methods & Results: 1) Records of a total of 41 patients with preoperative $T_{1-3}N_0M_0$ non-small cell lung cancer were reviewed and the histologic types of tumors were squamous cell carcinoma in 32 cases, adenocarcinoma in 6 cases and large cell carcinoma in 3 cases. Twenty-four cases were central lesions and seventeen cases were peripheral lesions. 2) Among the 32 cases with preoperative $T_2$, 2 cases were identified postoperatively as $T_3$ with invasion of chest wall and among 6 cases with preoperative $T_3$, 1 case was identified postoperatively as $T_4$ with invasion of aorta and pulmonary arteries. 3) After the operation of 35 cases with $T_{1-2}$, 5 cases were $N_1$ and 3 cases were $N_2$ postoperatively. After the operation of 6 cases with $T_3$, 2 cases were $N_1$ and 3 cases were $N_2$ postoperatively. Preoperative $T_3$ showed more intrathoracic lymph node metastases and higher $N_2/N_1$ involvement ratio than preoperative $T_{1-2}$. 4) Complete surgical resections were done in 34 out of 41 cases. Incomplete resection were done in all postoperative $N_2$ tumors. Conclusion: Invasive staging procedures such as mediastinoscopy should be considered in the case of preoperative $T_3$ non-small cell lung cancer even though mediastinal lymphadenopathy is not recognized on the CT scan of the chest.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.113-117
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• 2001

Purpose : To evaluate effect of postoperative radiotherapy on survival and local control for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Materials and Methods : Ninety two NSCLC patients with N1or N2 involvement who were treated with postoperative radiotherapy following surgery with curative intent from May 1987 to October 1999 were retrospectively analyzed. Age of the patients was ranged from 32 to 78 years. According to TNM Stage, 35 patients had Stage II and 57 had Stage III disease. There were 49 patients with N1 involvement and 43 patients with N2 involvement. Fifty six patients were noted to have $T1\~2$ tumors and 36 patients to have $T3\~4$ tumors. Delivered total dose was ranged from 40 to 60 Gy. Majority of patients received 50 Gy or 50.4 Gy. Follow-up period was ranged from 9 month to 7 years with median follow-up of 26 months. Results : Overall survival rates at 3 and 5 years for entire group of patients were $46\%\;and\;38\%$, respectively. Corresponding disease free survival rates were $44\%\;and\;36\%$. There was significant difference in survival between patients with Stage II and Stage III disease ($50\%\;vs\;28\%$ at 5-year). Five year survival rates for N1 and N2 patients were $52\%\;and\;20\%$, respectively (p<0.05). These were $40\%\;and\;34\%$ for patients with $T1\~2$ tumors and $T3\~4$ tumors. There were documented local relapses in $13\%$ of the patients. For patients with N1 and N2 Stage, local relapse rates were $8\%\;and\;18\%$, respectively. Conclusion : Our study confirms that postoperative radiotherapy for patients with non-small cell lung cancer improves local control. However, influence of postoperative radiotherapy on long-term survival is less clear. More effective systemic treatment to prevent distant metastasis should be investigated in future study to improve long-term survival.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.159-166
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• 2009

Purpose: We evaluated the efficacy and prognostic predictability of the $7^{th}$ UICC TNM classification compared to $6^{th}$ UICC TNM classification in patients with gastric cancer. Materials and Methods: Between June 1992 and December 2006, 1,633 patients with gastric cancer who had undergone gastric surgery and who had been analyzed by the $6^{th}$ UICC method were analyzed using the new $7^{th}$ UICC system. Results: Significant differences in 5-year survival rates were observed for $7^{th}$ UICC N0, N1, N2, N3a, and N3b compared to $6^{th}$ UICC. There were no significant differences in 5-year survival rates between T2 and T3. Distinct survival differences were present between stage III (IIIa, IIIb, and IIIc) and stage IV in $7^{th}$ UICC. Significant differences in 5-year survival rates were not expected for Ia versus Ib, Ib versus IIa, and IIb versus IIIa. The survival rates for the same stages were not homogeneously differentiated by $7^{th}$ UICC except for stage IV. Conclusion: The $7^{th}$ UICC classification system is not better able to predict patient survival compared to 6th UICC in patients with gastric cancer, but is better for accurate prognosis of patients with stage IV gastric cancer.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.114-119
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• 2006

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine whether it is possible to evaluate patients with pN2 or pN3 early gastric cancer (EGC) as being in an advanced stage before and during the operation. Materials and Methods: 4,430 patients underwent a gastrectomy for cancer from 1990 to 2003. Eight of the 552 patients with EGC included pN2 or pN3. The estimated clinical and surgical stage before and during the operation were compared to the pathological results, and a follow-up of progression was done. Results: The patients were evenly distributed among all age groups with seven men and one woman. The pre-operative estimate of T1 by CT was 25% (2/8). In the main, the cT stage was over estimated. The estimate of over N2 was 50% (4/8). One patient was preoperatively staged as la sT1 during operation was 57.1% (4/7), and the estimate of over N2 was 67% (4/6). Two patients were intraoperatively evaluated as Ia. Only one patient survived over 5 years, and the mean survival of these patients was 15 months $(95%\;Cl:\;0{\sim}35.5)$. Conclusion: It was generally possible to evaluate patients with EGC of over pN2 as being in an advanced stage before and during the operation. Although very rare (2/552, 0.04%), there were EGC patients whose stages were not predictable at all. Therefore, more precise preoperative and intraoperative staging methods are warranted.