Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Studies on combined small cell lung cancer (C-SCLC), which shows continuously increasing incidence, are rare. Accordingly, we explored the relationship between the clinicopathological characteristics and prognostic factors of C-SCLC patients and analyzed the treatment of this disease. METHODS: Between January 2006 and December 2011, 80 patients with pathologically confirmed C-SCLC were retrospectively analyzed. The Kaplan-Meier methods were used to calculate the survival rate, and the 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 C-SCLC patients in all groups had a median of 26.2 mo and a range of 0.3 to 81.4 mo. In univariate analysis, gender, Karnofsky performance score before treatment, tumor diameter, and tumor stage were the considered prognostic factors affecting the OS rate of the C-SCLC patients (P<0.05). Cox multivariate analysis showed that only the TNM stage was the independent prognostic factor influencing the OS of the C-SCLC patients. The majority (75.0%) of the patients received multimodality therapy and platinum-based chemotherapy as the main treatment. However, no significant differences in OS rate were observed between patient groups under conventional SCLC regimens and non-SCLC regimens (P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS: C-SCLC is a specific mixed carcinoma. Combined therapy with platinum-based chemotherapy as the main treatment should be adopted in the therapeutic regimen of this disease. TNM stage was the independent prognostic factor influencing the OS of C-SCLC patients.
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