Complete Thoracic Mediastinal Lymphadenectomy Leads to a Higher Rate of Pathologically Proven N2 Disease in Patients With Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

When complete MLND is performed in patients during pulmonary resection who are clinically node negative (have benign N2 nodes after selective endobronchial or esophageal ultrasound or mediastinoscopy) without using intraoperative frozen section of N2 or N1, more patients are pathologically staged with N2 disease; thus, more are considered for adjuvant chemotherapy. The impact on survival in these patients is unproven.