Application of the Novel Grading System of Invasive Pulmonary Adenocarcinoma in a Real Diagnostic Scenario: A Brief Report of 9353 Cases

INTRODUCTION: The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer proposed a novel grading system of invasive pulmonary adenocarcinoma (IPA), but the application of this grading system and its genotypic characterization in the real diagnostic scenario has never been reported. METHODS: We prospectively collected and analyzed the clinicopathological and genotypic features of a cohort of 9353 consecutive patients with resected IPA, including 7134 patients with detection of common driver mutation. RESULTS: In the entire cohort, 3 (0.3%) of lepidic, 1207 (19.0%) of acinar, and 126 (23.6%) of papillary predominant IPAs were diagnosed as grade 3. In chronological order, an evident downtrend of the proportion of grade 2 was observed in chronological order. Conversely, the diagnostic ratio of grade 1 (8.0%–14.5%) and grade 3 (27.9%–32.3%) experienced a gradual rise. EGFR mutation was more frequently detected in grade 2 (77.5%) and grade 1 (69.7%) IPA than grade 3 (53.7%, p < 0.001), whereas the mutation rates of KRAS, BRAF, ALK, and ROS1 were higher in grade 3 IPA. More importantly, the rate of EGFR mutation gradually fell as the proportion of high-grade components increased, to 24.3% in IPA with more than 90% high-grade components. CONCLUSIONS: The grading system for IPA could be applied to stratify patients with different clinicopathological and genotypic features in a real diagnostic scenario.