Improving post-resection risk stratification in non-small cell lung cancer: ‘wit, whither wander you?’

Association of Pathologic Nodal Staging Quality With Survival Among Patients With Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer After Resection With Curative Intent

“…The TNM staging method serves to compare patients across time and space, provides a means of estimating risk for death, enables the identification of candidates for adjuvant therapy, and provides a means of homogenizing comparison groups in clinical trials . Nodal staging is the most difficult component of the TNM constructs to accurately determine because of variability in use and accuracy of clinical staging tests and in the thoroughness of application of pN staging procedures …”

“…The system communicates the extent of disease, suggests treatment options, provides a means of homogenizing groups of patients enrolled into clinical trials, and enables objective outcome comparisons. Improving the prognostic value of the TNM staging system is of interest by identifying independent but complementary prognostic factors, including genetic profiles of early-stage cancer that can identify patients with higher mortality risk within specific stage subsets . Such progressive work is impaired by variation in the quality of application of the TNM staging criteria …”

The Prognostic Impact of Log Odds of Positive Lymph Nodes on Survival of Patients With Early-stage Non-small Cell Lung Cancer: A Population Study Based on the Seer Database and a Chinese Cohort

“…Lymph node (LN) status is an important prognostic factor of postoperative long-term survival for NSCLC. 13 In the 8 th edition of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) TNM classification, pN staging was classified as N0, N1, N2, and N3 according to the location of involved LNs. However, there are some drawbacks to the current TNM staging system, such as stage migration.…”