The most frequent brain metastasis originates from a lung cancer. Abou
t half of them are unique. We report a series of 36 patients with lung
cancer, operated for a single brain lesion. The mean age was 57.6 yea
rs, most (83.3 %) were male. Most of the metastases originated from a
primary adenocarcinoma (52.8 %), in 10 patients (27.8 %) from an epide
rmoid carcinoma, in 4 patients (11.1 %) from a small cell carcinoma an
d in 3 patients from a mixed lesion. The metastatic lesion was detecte
d before the primary lesion in 20 cases (55.5 %). The mean post-operat
ive survival was 9.6 months. 36 % were alive one year after surgical t
reatment. We evaluated our clinically findings, histopathological stud
ies and the type of surgical and medical post-operative management, at
the cerebral and pulmonary level in order to make a possible prognosi
s. In our series we found that only post-operative clinical status (Ka
rnofsky score) and the post-operative neurological grading (Order clas
sification) were significant factors (p < 0.001) to determine survival
time.