Sarcopenia After Resection of Early Non-small Cell Lung Cancer: Is Postoperative Skeletal Muscle Loss a Risk Factor for Poor Outcomes?

Excerpt

The clinical concept of skeletal muscle loss was proposed by Irwin Rosenberg for the first time in 1989.1 Skeletal muscle loss is caused by several mechanisms, including physical inactivity, inadequate nutrition, and cachexia. In patients with cancer, skeletal muscle loss has drawn a lot of attention since Prado et al.2 reported that pretreatment skeletal muscle decrease was significantly associated with poor outcomes in patients with solid tumors. However, in most previous studies, skeletal muscle amount was only analyzed at one time point during the pretreatment period, and few studies focused on the clinical impact of changes in skeletal muscle during medical interventions. Therefore, this study investigated whether postoperative changes in skeletal muscle after curative lung resection has a clinical role in patients with early non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Additionally, we investigated which clinicopathological factors were significantly associated with the risk of postoperative skeletal muscle loss. …