Lymph node dissection and survival in patients with early stage nonsmall cell lung cancer: A 10-year cohort study

It is still debatable whether complete mediastinal lymph node dissection (MLND) is associated with better survival than mediastinal lymph node sampling (MLNS) in surgical treatment of nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We aimed to assess the impact of lymph node dissection on long-term survival among stage I NSCLC patients. In this cohort study, 317 stage I NSCLC Chinese patients in Shanghai Chest Hospital were followed up for at least 10 years to evaluate the impact of different lymph node dissection modes on their survival. Among them, 161 patients were in the MLND group and 156 in the MLNS group. Overall survival and median survival times were calculated for the 2 groups. The association between lymph node dissection and the survival of NSCLC patients was assessed using Cox proportional-hazard models. Patients in the MLND group presented better survival (median survival time = 154.67 months) than those in the MLNS group (median survival time = 124.67 months). The MLNS had higher mortality than the MLND group, with the crude hazard ratio of the MLNS group relative to the MLND group as 1.32 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.97, 1.78). After adjusting for age and sex, the association between lymph node dissection and mortality (hazard ratio 1.36, 95% CI 1.00, 1.84) was statistically significant (P = .047). Further adjusting for baseline clinical characteristics, the association (hazard ratio 1.40, 95% CI 1.02, 1.92) remained statistically significant (P = .036). The association between lymph node dissection mode and mortality was strong among patients with tumor size between 2.0 and 3.0 cm (hazard ratio 2.79, 95% CI 1.45, 5.37). We found that the MLND was associated with better survival for patients with early-stage NSCLC, compared with the MLNS. The effects of MLND on survival may depend on tumor size. Our findings have important implications in the treatment of early-stage NSCLC. Further prospective studies with a large sample size are needed to confirm our findings.