Background & objective: Bronchioloalveolar carcinoma (BAC) is a well-differentiated lung adenocarcinoma occurring in the periphery of the lung and growing along an intact interstitial framework. There are controversies about the surgical treatment efficacy of BAC. This study was to explore the surgical treatment efficacy of BAC.
Methods: Data were collected from 130 patients with BAC, hospitalized in the department of Thoracic Surgery, Cancer Center of Sun Yat-sen University, diagnosed by postoperative pathology from 1985 to 2000. Clinical and histological features, approaches and outcomes of surgical treatment according to different TNM stages and clinical patterns were studied retrospectively.
Results: Of the 130 patients, 56.1% were men, 42.9% were women. The ratio of smoker to non-smoker was 1:1.55. Ninety-eight patients underwent complete resection and 32 underwent incomplete resection. Patients in stage I (n=54), stage II (n=15), stage III B (2/11), and stage IV (1/19) underwent complete resection, of whom the 5-year survival rates were 60.7%, 33.3%, 13.6%, and 14.0%, respectively. Patients of unifocal (96/113), multifocal (1/12), and pneumonic (1/19) patterns underwent complete resection, of whom the median survival time was 46.3, 20.6, and 5 months. The 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates were 96.4%, 58.6%, and 41.2% for the unifocal pattern, 91.2%, 41.7%, and 33.3% for the multifocal pattern, 20%, 0, and 0 for the pneumonic pattern.
Conclusion: Complete surgical resection can achieve favorable survival rates for BAC in stage I/II and multifocal BAC in stage III/IV, whereas relatively poorer prognosis for pneumonic BAC.