Original articleGeneral thoracicOutcomes of Patients With Isolated Adrenal Metastasis From Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinoma
Section snippets
Material and Methods
We searched the pathology database at the Massachusetts General Hospital for reports on adrenal specimens that contained mention of lung cancer in the report text between January 1994 and July 2010. This included both cytology (fine needle aspiration or core needle biopsy) and surgical pathology (adrenalectomy) specimens. All patients who underwent adrenalectomy for metastatic lung cancer were included, and all underwent lung resection and complete adrenalectomy. Patients underwent either open
Results
During the study period, 20 patients underwent adrenalectomy and 17 patients with isolated adrenal metastasis were treated nonoperatively. There were no operative deaths. Patients did not undergo adrenalectomy owing to presence of ipsilateral mediastinal nodal disease in 7 patients, because of extensive comorbid conditions in 3 patients, and because of patient preference in 1 patient. Adrenalectomy was not offered for unclear reasons in 6 patients. Relevant clinical characteristics are
Comment
This study corroborates the findings of other published series that resection of adrenal metastases is associated with long-term survival in a subset of patients with lung cancer [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. The 5-year overall survival was 34% among patients who underwent adrenalectomy, comparable to the 5-year survival of 25% reported by Tanventayon and colleagues [8] in their systematic review of adrenalectomy for lung cancer metastasis. There were no long-term survivors among patients with
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