Time between imaging and surgery is not a risk factor for upstaging of clinical stage IA non-small-cell lung cancer

Abstract OBJECTIVES The timing of preoperative imaging in patients with lung cancer is a debated topic, as there are limited data on cancer progression during the interval between clinical staging by imaging and pathological staging after resection. We quantified disease progression during this interval in patients with early stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) to better understand if its length impacts upstaging. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed our institutional database to identify patients who underwent surgery for clinically staged T1N0M0 NSCLC from January 2015 through September 2022. Tumour upstaging between chest computed tomography (CT) and surgery were analysed as a function of time (