ABSTRACT
Background and purpose:Life expectancy has continuously improved in recently years with the development of medical level. In 2012, the amount of people who were above 60 years old has reached 810 million and account for 11% of worldwide population. The worldwide population shift towards older ages will inevitably lead to more elderly patients being diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). It still remains controversial whether sublobar resection is effective in such cases. In order to solve this question, we need to understand the clinical characteristics of these tumors. Methods:From 2006 to 2012, a total of 310 patients with NSCLC who were above 65 years old underwent surgical resection in Department of Thoracic Surgery, the First Afifliated Hospital of China Medical University and the Second Department of Thoracic Surgical Oncology, Jilin Province Tumor Hospital. The clinical data were retrospectively analyzed in sex, stage, histology, smoking status, smoking amount, drinking status, surgical approaches, multimodality therapy and overall survival. Survival was analyzed by Kaplan–Meier method and log-rank test. Results:There were 256 (82.6%) elderly patients who underwent standard lobectomies and 54 (17.4%) patients who underwent sublobar resections. The overall 5-year survival rate was 52.9%. Patients with different surgical approaches (lobectomy and sublobar resection) had nearly the same 5-year survival rates (60.5%vs 60.8%, P=0.381). The prognosis were signiifcantly inlfuenced by gender (P=0.024), stage of disease (P=0.028), smoking status (P=0.034) and smoking amount (P=0.028). The multivariate Cox proportional hazards analysis revealed that the smoking status was associated with the hazard ratio of 1.660 (1.058-2.606;P=0.028). Conclusion:In elderly NSCLC patients, sublobar resection is considered to be an appropriate treatment in comparison with lobectomy, as this procedure provides an equivalent long-term survival. The survival of elderly patients with lung cancer is closely related to the smoking status.