Abstract
OBJECTIVES: There is currently no evidence documenting the clinical characteristics and prognosis of non-high-risk patients with incidental stage T1 lung cancer (LC). The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical characteristics and prognosis of non-high-risk patients with incidental stage T1 LC. METHODS: This prospective cohort study included patients with incidental stage T1 LC who were diagnosed pathologically at the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University between 1st Jan 2019 and 31st Dec 2023. The follow-up time for all participants concluded on 31st Jan 2024, or upon death. All included patients were divided into non-high-risk (observation) and high-risk (control) groups based on the 2021 US preventative services task force recommendations. The primary outcomes were overall survival probability and LC-specific survival probability. The secondary outcomes were clinical characteristics, including demographic variables, histological types and TNM staging. RESULTS: We studied 1876 patients with incidental stage T1 LC. Of these, 1491 (79.48%) non-high-risk patients were included in the observation group, and the remaining 385 (20.52%) high-risk patients composed the control group. The follow-up interval was between 0 and 248 months for all participants, with a median time of 41.64 ± 23.85 months. The patients in the observation group were younger and had smaller tumors, more adenocarcinomas, and earlier disease stages than those in the control group (p ≤ 0.001). The overall survival probability (HR = 0.23, [95% CI: 0.18, 0.31], p < 0.001) and the LC-specific survival probability (HR = 0.23, [95% CI: 0.17, 0.31], p < 0.001) for the patients in the observation group were also both higher than those in the control group. The results appeared to be consistent across important subgroups. CONCLUSION: In this study, non-high-risk patients with incidental stage T1 LC were younger, had smaller tumors, had more adenocarcinomas, had a lower probability of metastasis, and had longer survival than did high-risk patients.