Lung Cancer Surgical Resection for Early Stage Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

Lung surgery is the main treatment for non-small cell lung cancer when it’s in early stage. Lung surgical resection has been shown to have the best treatment result in the best 5 year lung cancer survival rates compared to other non-small cell lung cancer treatment management. Dr Evarts Graham renown for the first doctors that successful pneumonectomy in 1933, since then doctor has developed pneumonectomy to perfect it. From refinements in patient selection, operative techniques and pre-operative management which have translated into better lung cancer survival rates with reduced postoperative morbidity and mortality.


If we look back at the lung cancer survival rates history, there are a numerous variation in the degree of metastasis character and node staging if we see from the technique that use for evaluation, such as; CT scan, PET scan, routine or selective mediastinoscopy, node sampling or node dissection at operation. Also the difficulty of naming mediastinal and hilar node disease according to whichever node map was utilized. A recommendation for node classification was revised in 1997 and this is currently used in Australia for description of node locations both anatomically and pathologically.

The lung cancer survival rate for people over the 47 year period had not changed but the mortality of operative mortality had obviously decreased. Rubin had reviewed this lung cancer survival rates for surgical resection by comparing the patients that treated from 1947 to 1969 and from 1981 to 1994.

In a randomized study that reported by Morrison, which is comparing two treatments management for early stage of non-small cell lung cancer, they are radical radiation in four years for early stage disease against surgical resection. At four years, lung cancer survival rates for patients that undergo radiation was 7% and lung cancer survival rates for patients that undergo surgical resection was 23%. In larger study reported by Gauden, radiation therapy for early stage lung cancer shows a five year reoccurrence free survival 23% with the median survival being 19.5 months, significantly less than that reported in comparable surgical series for non-small cell lung cancer.

There are a lot of reviews that have been published supporting surgery as the preferred form of treatment for early stage non-small cell lung cancer. Survival for patients with stage 1 and 2 non-small cell lung cancer.

Pathological stage	Five-year survival
Stage 1	T1 N0	76.0%	(68%–83%)
	T2 N0	59.5%	(54%–65%)
Stage 2	T1 N1	51.9%	(40%–63%)
	T2 N1	40.3%	(39%–45%)
	T3 N0	38.0%	(25%–55%)

Main Article - Lung Surgery