British Thoracic Society guidelines for the investigation and management of pulmonary nodules: accredited by NICE

Surgical resection is standard therapy in stage I non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC); however, many patients are inoperable due to comorbid diseases. Building on a previously reported phase I trial, we carried out a prospective phase II trial using stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) in this population. Eligible patients included clinically staged T1 or T2 (< or = 7 cm), N0, M0, biopsy-confirmed NSCLC. All patients had comorbid medical problems that precluded lobectomy. SBRT treatment dose was 60 to 66 Gy total in three fractions during 1 to 2 weeks. All 70 patients enrolled completed therapy as planned and median follow-up was 17.5 months. The 3-month major response rate was 60%. Kaplan-Meier local control at 2 years was 95%. Altogether, 28 patients have died as a result of cancer (n = 5), treatment (n = 6), or comorbid illnesses (n = 17). Median overall survival was 32.6 months and 2-year overall survival was 54.7%. Grade 3 to 5 toxicity occurred in a total of 14 patients. Among patients experiencing toxicity, the median time to observation was 10.5 months. Patients treated for tumors in the peripheral lung had 2-year freedom from severe toxicity of 83% compared with only 54% for patients with central tumors. High rates of local control are achieved with this SBRT regimen in medically inoperable patients with stage I NSCLC. Both local recurrence and toxicity occur late after this treatment. This regimen should not be used for patients with tumors near the central airways due to excessive toxicity.

Lung nodules are detected very commonly on computed tomographic (CT) scans of the chest, and the ability to detect very small nodules improves with each new generation of CT scanner. In reported studies, up to 51% of smokers aged 50 years or older have pulmonary nodules on CT scans. However, the existing guidelines for follow-up and management of noncalcified nodules detected on nonscreening CT scans were developed before widespread use of multi-detector row CT and still indicate that every indeterminate nodule should be followed with serial CT for a minimum of 2 years. This policy, which requires large numbers of studies to be performed at considerable expense and with substantial radiation exposure for the affected population, has not proved to be beneficial or cost-effective. During the past 5 years, new information regarding prevalence, biologic characteristics, and growth rates of small lung cancers has become available; thus, the authors believe that the time-honored requirement to follow every small indeterminate nodule with serial CT should be revised. In this statement, which has been approved by the Fleischner Society, the pertinent data are reviewed, the authors' conclusions are summarized, and new guidelines are proposed for follow-up and management of small pulmonary nodules detected on CT scans.

Lung adenocarcinoma is a heterogeneous group of tumors with a highly variable prognosis, not well predicted by the current pathologic classification system. The 2004 World Health Organization classification results in virtually all tumors encountered in clinical practice being allocated to the adenocarcinoma of mixed subtype category. A new classification developed by an international multidisciplinary expert panel sponsored by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, American Thoracic Society, and European Respiratory Society, is based on histomorphologic subtype and has recently been validated in a North American series of 514 stage I lung adenocarcinomas. We investigated the relationship between the new classification and patient survival in a series of Australian patients with stages I, II, and III lung adenocarcinoma. We identified 210 patients from a surgical database who underwent resection of lung adenocarcinoma from 1996 to 2009. Two pathologists, blinded to patient outcome, independently performed histopathologic subtyping according to the new classification. Kaplan-Meier curves were used to calculate 5-year survival for each separate histopathologic subtype/variant. Univariate and multivariate analyses were undertaken to control for validated prognostic factors. We confirmed that the new subtypes of adenocarcinoma in situ, minimally invasive adenocarcinoma and lepidic-predominant adenocarcinoma had a 5-year survival approaching 100%, whereas micropapillary-predominant and solid with mucin-predominant adenocarcinomas were associated with particularly poor survival. Papillary-predominant and acinar-predominant adenocarcinomas had an intermediate prognosis. This effect persisted after controlling for stage. Classification of lung adenocarcinoma according to the new International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer/American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society classification correlated with 5-year survival. These relationships persisted after controlling for known prognostic patient and tumor characteristics. The new classification has advantages not only for individual patient care but also for better selection and stratification for clinical trials and molecular studies.