High grade tumor budding is associated with poor survival in pathologic stage I lung adenocarcinoma

Tumor budding is a significant prognostic parameter that has been related to aggressive behavior in early-stage tumors of various origins. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinicopathological significance of tumor budding in pathologic stage (pStage) I lung adenocarcinomas. This study comprised 107 patients who underwent curative resection for pStage I lung adenocarcinomas at our hospital between December 2010 and January 2016. We examined tumor budding on routine hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) slides from resected specimens. Tumors were categorized into two groups based on the degree of tumor budding: low grade (grade 0–1) and high grade (grade 2–3). We evaluated the relationship between tumor budding and overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS) and clinicopathological parameters. There is a significant difference (p = 0.002) between the 5-year DFS rates of the high-grade and the low-grade tumor budding group, which were 70 % and 90 %, respectively. High-grade tumor budding positive patients from the same pathological stage (p