Abstract
BACKGROUND: Small cell lung cancer combined with squamous cell carcinoma are rare. The aim of this study was to analyze the clinicopathological characteristics and treatment, and explored the prognostic factors of this disease. METHODS: Between January 2004 and December 2012, 58 patients with cytopathologically confirmed small cell lung cancers combined with squamous cell carcinoma were retrospectively analyzed. Kaplan-Meier methods were used to calculate the survival rate, and Log-rank test was used to examine differences between arms. The Cox regression model was used to analyze the independent factors affecting the overall survival (OS). RESULTS: The OS of the 58 patients was 22.7 months with a range of 0.3 to 124.3 months. In univariate analysis, Karnofsky performance score before treatment, extensive disease, tumor stage were the considered prognostic factors affecting the OS rate (P<0.05). Cox multivariate analysis showed that only the tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage was the independent prognostic factor (P=0.019). The majority of the patients received multimodality therapy and chemotherapy was the main treatment. Distant metastasis was the main reasonfor the treatment failure. CONCLUSIONS: Combined therapy with chemotherapy as the main treatment should be adopted in therapeutic regimen of the patients with small cell lung cancers combined with squamous cell carcinoma. TNM stage was the independent prognostic factor influencing the OS.
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