Original articleGeneral thoracicDifferences in Outcomes Between Younger and Older Patients With Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer
Section snippets
Patients
This is a nested case-control study from January 1999 to January 2006. Inclusion criteria mandated that all patients be older than 19 years old, have biopsy-proven NSCLC, and have been clinically staged using computed tomography (CT scan) and fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (PET) scan before surgical resection. Integrated PET/CT instead of dedicated PET was used after 2002. Patients who received neoadjuvant therapy of any kind were excluded from the study. A consecutive series
Results
There were 762 patients (254 patients were <45 years old and 508 patients were >45 years old). Table 1 shows a greater proportion of older patients had a history of smoking, and the median time until presentation for treatment was significantly longer for those younger than 45 years (6.5 versus 2.8 weeks; p < 0.001). It also shows that younger patients were more likely to be symptomatic at the time of diagnosis (89% versus 68%; p < 0.001). The most common presenting symptom in both groups was
Comment
Non–small cell lung cancer is mainly a cancer of the elderly. Despite this fact, there remain a significant number of young patients who present with NSCLC each year. On the basis of the findings of our study, this same disease exhibits separate clinicopathologic features in these two different age groups. In this study we showed that despite similar stage and tumor characteristics, younger patients with NSCLC have a significantly worse prognosis than older patients. These findings differ from
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