Prognostic factors in completely resected lymph-node-negative pulmonary adenocarcinoma

BACKGROUND: Lymph node involvement is one of the important prognostic factors for early-stage lung cancer. However, in lymph node-negative (N0) lung cancer the recurrent rate may be as high as 30%. We aimed to study potential prognostic factors including clinicopathological factors and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation status in this lung cancer population. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records and pathological examinations of patients with completely resected N0 pulmonary adenocarcinoma treated in our institute between 2009 and 2016. We used Cobas(®) test to determine EGFR mutation status. Recurrence-free survival (RFS) was analyzed by univariable and multivariable Cox regression analyses. RESULTS: We recruited 220 patients with median duration of follow up 5 years. Majority of these patients were in stage I (80%) and did not receive adjuvant therapy (86%). There were 53% with EGFR mutations which comprised of exon 19 deletion 51% and L858R 43%. Recurrence occurred in 64 out of 220 patients (29%). The median time to recurrence was 2.1 years. Statistically significant prognostic factors in both univariate and multivariate analyses included tumor size ≥4 centimeter (cm) (HR: 1.94; 95% CI: 1.03–3.67), visceral pleural invasion (HR: 2.53; 95% CI: 1.34–4.79), tumor necrosis (HR: 2.45; 95% CI: 1.13–5.31) and bronchial resection margin <2 cm (HR: 1.96; 95% CI: 1.10–3.51). However, presence of sensitizing EGFR mutation was not found to be a significant prognostic factor (HR: 1.20; 95% CI: 0.66–2.18; P=0.56). CONCLUSIONS: In N0 surgically resected lung adenocarcinoma, there were significant pathological prognostic factors including tumor 4 cm or more, visceral pleural invasion, tumor necrosis and bronchial resection margin less than 2 cm. Mutation of EGFR is not a significant prognostic factor to determine the risk of recurrence in this population and their risks shall be determined by the other poor prognostic factors.