Nonexamination of Lymph Nodes and Survival After Resection of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Patients with pNX resections are a high-risk subset, with survival approximating pathologic N1, not N0. They should have further attempts at retrieving lymph nodes for examination or be offered postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy. We predict that treatment modalities that fail to address lymph nodes are likely to yield inferior survival in comparison to surgery with proper lymph node examination. The proportion of pNX lung resections may be a sentinel quality indicator for lung cancer programs.