Is sampling really effective in staging non-small cell lung cancer? A prospective study.

Thoracic surgeons have long debated whether systematic nodal dissection (SND) can be replaced by mediastinal lymph node sampling (MLS) in order to stage and cure non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) correctly by performing a radical surgical resection of the tumour1,2. Passlick et al.4 found a statistically significant difference in the cumulative survival (Kaplan-Meier analysis; log-rank: p = 0.044) of 73 patients affected by NSCLC who underwent MLS (n = 42) vs SND (n = 31). A larger study published by Keller et al.5 seemed to find a limited survival advantage with MLS for patients with right lung tumours (p < 0.001) and better recognition of multiple levels of N2 disease (p = 0.001). Is sampling really effective in staging non-small cell lung cancer? A prospective study