Distant Metastasis and Survival Outcomes after Computed Tomography-Guided Needle Biopsy in Resected Stage I-III Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Background and objective Several reports describe the needle-tract implantation after percutaneous needle lung biopsy. The present study evaluated whether preoperative computed tomography-guided needle biopsy (CTNB) affected the distant metastasis and overall survival in patients with early non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods A total of 1667 patients with pathological stage I-III NSCLC were assimilated. Of these, 168 patients received preoperative CTNB, whereas 1499 patients were not subjected to any biopsy before surgical resection. Propensity score matching method was adopted to balance the observed covariates between the two groups. Cox regression analysis and Kaplan-Meier estimations were used for survival analysis. Subset analysis was performed in the p-stage ≤ II cases. Results The distant metastasis and mortality were not significantly increased for all patients with preoperative CTNB (P = 0.142 and P = 0.125, respectively). The subset analysis of p-stage ≤ II cases showed that CTNB increased the risk of distant metastasis (P = 0.032) while not increasing the risk of mortality (P = 0.086). Conclusion CTNB can increase the risk of distant metastasis in the p-stage ≤ II patients.