Initial bronchoscopic treatment for patients with intraluminal bronchial carcinoids.

Objective: Carcinoid of the lung is considered low-grade malignancy, and less invasive treatment may therefore be considered. We analyzed the long-term outcome of initial bronchoscopic treatment in patients with intraluminal bronchial carcinoids.

Methods: Initial bronchoscopic treatment was applied to improve presurgical condition, to obtain tissue samples for proper histologic classification, and to enable less extensive parenchymal resection.

Cost-effectiveness of FDG-PET in staging non-small cell lung cancer: the PLUS study.

Currently, up to 50% of the operations in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are futile owing to the presence of locally advanced tumour or distant metastases. More accurate pre-operative staging is required in order to reduce the number of futile operations. The cost-effectiveness of fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography ((18)FDG-PET) added to the conventional diagnostic work-up was studied in the PLUS study.

Mitotic index does not predict prognosis in stage IA non-small cell lung cancer.

Despite radical resection, many patients with stage IA non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) die of metastatic disease, showing that apparently there were already micrometastases at the time of surgery. To identify patients at risk for metastatic disease, accurate prognostic factors are needed. Because the mitotic activity index (MAI) is of good prognostic value in several other cancers, we assessed its value in stage IA NSCLC.

Effectiveness of positron emission tomography in the preoperative assessment of patients with suspected non-small-cell lung cancer: the PLUS multicentre randomised trial.

Background: Up to 50% of curative surgery for suspected non-small-cell lung cancer is unsuccessful. Accuracy of positron emission tomography (PET) with 18-fluorodeoxyglucose (18FDG) is thought to be better than conventional staging for diagnosis of this malignancy. Up to now however, there has been no evidence that PET leads to improved management of patients in routine clinical practice.