Reappraising the clinical usability of consolidation-to-tumor ratio on CT in clinical stage IA lung cancer

OBJECTIVES: Ground-glass opacity (GGO) on computed tomography is associated with prognosis in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. However, the stratification of the prognostic value of GGO is controversial. We aimed to evaluate clinicopathologic characteristics of early-stage NSCLC based on the consolidation-to-tumor ratio (CTR), conduct multi-pronged analysis, and stratify prognosis accordingly. METHODS: We retrospectively investigated 944 patients with clinical stage IA NSCLC, who underwent curative-intent lung resection between August 2018 and January 2020. The CTR was measured and used to categorize patients into six groups (1, 0%; 2, 0–25%; 3, 25–50%; 4, 50–75%; 5, 75–100%; and 6, 100%). RESULTS: Pathologic nodal upstaging was found in 1.8% (group 4), 9.0% (group 5), and 17.4% (group 6), respectively. The proportion of patients with a high grade of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes tended to decrease as the CTR increased. In a subtype analysis of patients with adenocarcinoma, all of the patients with predominant micro-papillary patterns were in the CTR > 50% groups, and most of the patients with predominant solid patterns were in group 6 (47/50, 94%). The multivariate analysis demonstrated that CTR 75–100% (hazard ratio [HR], 3.85; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.58–9.36) and CTR 100% (HR, 5.58; 95% CI, 2.45–12.72) were independent prognostic factors for DFS, regardless of tumor size. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated that the CTR could provide various noninvasive clinicopathological information. A CTR of more than 75% is the factor associated with a poor prognosis and should be considered when making therapeutic plans for patients with early-stage NSCLC.