Popis: |
To identify the prognostic significance of certain clinical, cellular and immunologic markers in resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).A cohort of patients with resectable NSCLC was prospectively followed up for 8 years (100% follow-up).A university hospital in a large Canadian city.One hundred and thirteen consecutive patients who underwent surgical resection of primary NSCLC.Presence of peritumoral B lymphocytes (identified with antibody to CD20) and T lymphocytes (antibody to CD43), along with tumour markers (carcinoembryonic antigen [CEA], keratin, cytokeratin, S-100 protein, vimentin, chromogranin) and other factors such as age, sex, cell type, American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stage, histologic grade, DNA ploidy and S-phase fraction were correlated with survival.The mean age of patients in the study was 66.0 years; 60% were male. Histologic types of the tumours were: adenocarcinoma 57 (50.4%), squamous cell 47 (41.6%), adenosquamous 6 (5.3%) and large cell 3 (2.6%). AJCC stages were: I 66 (58.4%), II 20 (17.7%) and III 27 (23.9%). Histologic grades were: I (well differentiated) 31 (27.4%), II 50 (44.2%), III 29 (25.7%) and IV 3 (2.6%). Survival was 85% at 1 year (95% confidence interval [CI] 76%-90%), 44% at 5 years (95% CI 34%-53%) and 34% at 10 years (95% CI 22%-46%). Multivariate analyses using the Cox proportional hazards model for survival confirmed AJCC stage (p0.001) in all histologic subtypes to be the strongest factor of independent prognostic significance. It also revealed the presence of CD20-stained B lymphocytes (p = 0.04) in the peritumoral region of all tumours to be a positive prognostic factor. This relation was especially strong for nonsquamous cell carcinomas (p0.001). For squamous cell carcinomas, the immunohistochemical presence of CEA was of marginally negative prognostic value (p = 0.04). DNA ploidy and a high S-phase fraction showed no evidence of prognostic value for stage I tumours, but for stages II and III tumours there was strong evidence of prognostic value (p0.001 jointly). The evidence for DNA ploidy was especially strong in stages II and III squamous cell tumours (p = 0.008), and for a high S-phase fraction was strongest in stages II and III nonsquamous cell tumours (p = 0.002).AJCC stage remains the most important prognostic indicator from a variety of clinical variables and tumour markers in postoperative patients with resectable NSCLC. For nonsquamous cell lung carcinomas, the presence of peritumoral B lymphocytes was strongly associated with improved survival, suggesting an important role for humoral mediated immunity. |