Number of Mediastinal Lymph Nodes as a Prognostic Factor in PN2 Non Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Single Centre Experience and Review of the Literature

Abstract

Currently the most important prognostic factor in lung cancer is the stage. In the current lung TNMclassification system, N category is defined exclusively by anatomic nodal location though, in other type of tumours,number of lymph nodes is confirmed to be a fundamental prognostic factor. Therefore we evaluated the numberof mediastinal lymph nodes as a prognostic factor in locally advanced NSCLC after multimodality treatment,observing a significant effect of the number of lymph nodes in terms of OS (p<0.01) and DFS (p<0.001): patientswith a low number of positive mediastinal nodes have a better prognosis.