Lung cancer metastases to the brain: clinical and morphological prognostic factors.

Brain metastases (BM) are the most frequent intracranial SOL and extremely heterogeneous group of tumours from morphological point of view. Nevertheless, studies devoted to BM up to now paid little attention to the histogenesis of the primary tumour. Lung carcinoma is the most common source of BM; morpologically this is a very heterogeneous group of tumors, and they demostrate different clinical pathway and outcome. The aim of present study was to evaluate clinical and morphological prognostic factors in 126 patients with lung carcinoma metastases to the brain, operated in 2004-2010 at Burdenko Neurosurgical Institute. Statistical analysis demonstrated that age, gender, amount and location of BM, primary operation and even histological tumour type were not significant prognostic factors, meanwhile absence of extracranial metastases and Karnofsky index above 70 were significant factors of the favorable prognosis.