Medical oncology
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The detection and diagnosis of small-sized (2 cm or less) non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has increased with the development of computed tomography (CT). Over 80% of 5-year survival rate has been reported in surgically treated peripheral lung cancer. There are systematic mediastinal and hilar lymph node involvement pleural invasion and intrapulmonary metastasis even with tumor diameter less than 2 cm. ⋯ There are systematic mediastinal and hilar lymph node involvement even with tumor diameter less than 2 cm. The results of the present study suggested that systematic lymph node dissection is necessary even for cases with tumor diameter less than 2 cm. However, if the tumor is within 1.0 cm in diameter with obvious GGO showing on chest CT scan, these are good candidates for partial resection without mediastinal lymph node dissection.
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This study was to investigate whether the expressions of DNA repair genes ERCC1 (excision repair cross complementing 1), RRM1 (ribonucleotide reductase subunit M1) and BRCA1 (breast cancer 1) affected clinical outcome in patients with NSCLC. Patients with stage IIIb/IV NSCLC were given platinum-based chemotherapy. Messenger RNA expression levels of ERCC1, BRCA1 and RRM1 were determined by real-time polymerase chain reaction with TaqMan probes in the tumor. ⋯ A significant relationship was observed between the expression of ERCC1 and BRCA1 and TTP (6.5 vs. 5.1 months, P=0.001, 5.2 vs. 6.5, P=0.019, respectively). High expression of BRCA1 was associated with better survival in the anti-tubulin-containing regimen subgroup (8.7 vs. 13.0, P=0.035). ERCC1, RRM1 and BRCA1 are promising predictive and prognostic biomarkers in advanced non-small cell lung cancer.