Abstract
BACKGROUND: Associations between adjuvant chemotherapy (ACT) and the improvement in survival for patients with pT2N0M0 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received R0 resection remain controversial. This study aimed to evaluate the value of ACT for patients with pT2N0M0 NSCLCs, and to identify the subgroups who could benefit from ACT. METHODS: Multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate independent prognostic factors. High-risk factor (HRF) included visceral pleural invasion (VPI), lymphovascular invasion (LVI) and poor differentiation/undifferentiated tumors. RESULTS: Of the 899 patients, 277 (30.8%) patients received ACT. More younger patients (p < 0.001) and male patients (p = 0.007) received ACT. With the increase of pathological tumor size (p < 0.001) and the number of HRFs (p < 0.001), there was a significant rise in the proportion of patients receiving ACT. For all patients, ACT could not improve recurrence-free survival (RFS) (p = 0.672) and overall survival (OS) (p = 0.306). For patients with pathological stage IIA or radiological pure-solid tumors, ACT could significantly improve the OS (p = 0.011 and p = 0.037, respectively), and multivariate analysis revealed that ACT was an independent prognostic factor for patients with pathological stage IIA (p = 0.005). ACT could improve the OS significantly in patients with pathological stage IB pure-solid lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) (p = 0.043). CONCLUSION: ACT was valuable for patients with pathological stage IIA (pT2bN0M0) and patients with radiological pure-solid LUAD of pathological stage IB. A combination of radiological features and pathological subtypes could be helpful when selecting patients with pT2N0M0 NSCLCs for ACT.