SURGICAL RESECTION OF PULMONARY METASTASES

Background To review the results of complete surgical resection of pul monary metastasis - a ten-year experience. Setting. Retrospective anal ysis of all patients with lung secondaries who received complete surgi cal resection of pulmonary metastases (from 1984 to 1995) in Grantham Hospital, Hong Kong. Sixty patients over a 10-year period were studied . Methods. Eighty thoracotomies were performed with 88 tumour nodules excised. The follow-up period ranged from 5 months to 111 months. Resu lts. Thirteen (14.8%) specimens were found to have tumour size greater than 5.0 cm. This may reflect late detection of metastatic tumour and probably accounts for the higher percentage of our patients receiving more major lung resections (63.3%) than just wedge resections (36.6%) . The mean survival period for the subgroup with hepatocellular carcin oma was 28.2 months and for the nasopharyngeal carcinoma group was 25 months. The mean survival of the whole group was 26.4 months. Conclusi ons. The favourable outcome for hepatocellular carcinoma and nasophary ngeal carcinoma could be due to the result of selection of patients wi th more favourable prognosis for surgery. The latent period, using 12 months as a break-off point, did not affect patient survival in our st udy.