Published in:
01-12-2019 | NSCLC | ASO Author Reflections
ASO Author Reflections: The Dissection of Station 4L Lymph Node for Left-Sided Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Should Receive More Attention
Authors:
Lunxu Liu, MD, PhD, Zhenfa Zhang, MD
Published in:
Annals of Surgical Oncology
|
Special Issue 3/2019
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Excerpt
The cornerstone of treatment for operable patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains lobectomy with systematic nodal dissection;
1 however, no consensus has been reached as to the optimal extent of lymph node dissection. The left lower paratracheal (4L) lymph node station is prone to involvement and may play a crucial role in further metastasis of left-sided NSCLC.
2,
3 This implies the need for routine 4L node dissection (4LND), however thoracic surgeons disregard 4LND as a standard procedure during mediastinal lymph node dissection (MLND) for certain reasons, e.g. guidelines do not clearly recommend 4LND and it is rather difficult to perform. Until the recent study by Wang et al.,
4 which evaluated the prognosis of 4LND on patients with left-sided NSCLC, no studies had explored its importance and necessity. We evaluated the characteristics of patients who would benefit from 4LND,
5 and, furthermore, found this issue had important clinical significance. …
