Lung cancer : journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer
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Clinical Trial
Influence of blood transfusions and preoperative anemia on long-term survival in patients operated for non-small cell lung cancer.
It has been postulated that transfusions have immunosuppressive effects that promote tumor growth and metastasis. Moreover perioperative anemia is considered an independent prognostic factor on outcome in patients operated for malignancy. We evaluated the influence of red blood cell (RBC) transfusions and perioperative anemia on survival in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) patients. ⋯ In particular for stage I patients, it was shown that RBC transfusion was an independent prognostic factor for long-term survival as detected by multivariate analysis (p=0.043), while anemia was not. RBC transfusions affect adversely the survival of stage I NSCLC patients, while do not exert any effect on survival of patients with surgically resectable more advanced disease, where preoperative anemia is an independent negative prognostic factor. These findings indicate that RBC transfusion might exert an immunomodulatory effect on patients with early disease while in more advanced stages this effect is not apparent.