Lobectomy leads to optimal survival in early-stage small cell lung cancer: A retrospective analysis

Objective Stage I or II small cell lung cancer is rare. We evaluated the contemporary incidence of early-stage small cell lung cancer and defined its optimal local therapy. Methods We analyzed the incidence, treatment patterns, and outcomes of 2214 patients with early-stage small cell lung cancer (1690 with stage I and 524 with stage II) identified from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database from 1988 to 2005. Results Early-stage small cell lung cancer constituted a stable proportion of all small cell lung cancers (3%–5%), lung cancers (0.10%–0.17%), and stage I lung cancers (1%–1.5%) until 2003 but, by 2005, increased significantly to 7%, 0.29%, and 2.2%, respectively ( P