Introduction: Determinating the prognosis of patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a challenge. Since up to 30% of patients who have undergone surgical resection experience recurrence, generally in distant organs, it is reasonable to postulate that neo-adjuvant or adjuvant treatments might be useful. Better knowledge of prognostic factors could perhaps define which patient populations should be targeted with such treatments.
State of the art: Numerous potential prognostic factors, relating to the disease (TNM classification, histology, tumor size, blood vessels invasion, micro-metastasis, serum or molecular markers), the patient (gender, age, co-morbidity) as well as the treatment (delay, resection, lymph node dissection, neo-adjuvant and adjuvant treatments), are discussed.
Perspectives: These prognostic factors should be integrated into the design of future clinical trials of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy attempting to evaluate the effectiveness of various combinations of neo-adjuvant or adjuvant therapies.
Conclusions: These factors may offer the opportunity to clinically and biologically characterize the different subgroups of patients, leading to a more rational, and perhaps individualized, choice of therapy.