Lymph node micrometastasis in non–small cell lung cancer

Lung cancer has some of the highest morbidity and mortality rates of all cancers, and an important risk factor for mortality in patients with lung cancer is tumor metastasis. Even if a tumor is completely removed at an early stage of the disease, quite a number of patients still have the risk of recurrence. With the advent of molecular diagnostic and therapeutics, more and more studies have found that a poor prognosis may be related to lymph node micrometastasis. However, clinicians still find that predicting the prognosis and choosing the type of surgery and postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy are still challenging. Thus, this article reviews the current research status of lymph node micrometastasis in non–small cell lung cancer, envision to provide some updates and insights in this area. [Display omitted] •Introduce molecular mechanism and compares the detection methods of NSCLC lymph node micrometastasis.•Collected clinical studies on the prognosis of micrometastasis concluded that micrometastasis can affect the prognosis.•Studied the correlation between different regions or numbers of lymph nodes and prognosis.•Explored the relationship between surgical methods and postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy with micrometastasis.