Visceral Pleural Invasion Is Not Predictive of Survival in Patients With Lung Cancer and Smaller Tumor Size

The effect of VPI on survival in NSCLC varies greatly with tumor size, with VPI not strongly associated with OS or DFS in tumors smaller than 5 cm, but showing large negative effects on DFS for stage T2b and stage T3 tumors. Using VPI to upstage T1 tumors to a higher T stage is not warranted because it would misrepresent these VPI-T stage subgroup effects.