Association of lymph node involvement with the prognosis of pathological T1 invasive non-small cell lung cancer.

Background: Lymph node involvement could help to predict the prognosis of pathological T1 (pT1, diameters of ≤3 cm) non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This study assessed the clinicopathological factors and associated lymph node involvement in invasive lung adenocarcinoma (IAC) and squamous cell lung cancer (SCC) and the overall and disease-free survival associated with these factors.

Methods: Three hundred and twenty-five patients with pathological T1 NSCLC (253 IAC and 72 SCC) were retrospectively analyzed from a pool of 1094 primary lung cancer patients.