Can the Japanese National Clinical Database risk calculator predict long-term survival of patients who undergo palliative segmentectomy for primary lung cancer?

Selection criteria for palliative limited surgery in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) can vary by institution or surgeon. We retrospectively reviewed outcomes of poor-risk patients who underwent palliative segmentectomy (PS), using the National Clinical Database Risk Calculator (RC). We retrospectively analyzed medical records of patients with NSCLC tumors ≥ 20 mm and consolidation/tumor ratios ≥ 0.5 on computed tomography, who underwent PS from January 2009 to March 2016. Median follow-up time was 47 months (range 2–102 months). We enrolled 67 patients (median age: 73.0 years), of whom 54 received thoracoscopic surgery and 28 received medial lymph-node dissection. The RC’s mean predictive probability rate for perioperative mortality or severe complications was 7.1%. Of the 67 patients, 24 patients (43.0%) suffered post-surgical complications, including 2 (3%) who died in hospital; 17 eventually suffered NSCLC recurrences and/or metastases, 11 eventually died from NSCLC, and 17 died from other diseases. Five-year overall survival (OS) was 59.4%. When the patients were divided into high-risk (HR) and low-risk (LR) groups based on the RC, 5-year OS was significantly less in the HR group (43.9%) than in the LR group (82.2%; P < 0.05). The RC, which was developed primarily to determine perioperative risk, can predict long-term prognosis for compromised patients who undergo PS.