Background: This study aims to identify the prognostic factors in Stage IIIA non-small cell lung cancer and to investigate whether there was a significant difference in terms of overall survival and diseasefree survival among the subgroups belonging to this disease stage.

Methods: Between January 2010 and December 2018, a total of 144 patients (125 males, 19 females; median age 60 years; range, 41 to 80 years) who were operated for non-small cell lung cancer in our clinic and whose pathological stage was reported as IIIA were retrospectively analyzed. Data including demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients, histopathological diagnosis, the standardized uptake value of the mass on positron emission tomography-computed tomography, tumor diameter, type of surgery, lymph node metastasis status, visceral pleural invasion, and overall and disease-free survival rates were recorded.

Results: The median survival was 39 (range, 27.8 to 46.1) months and the five-year overall survival rate was 28%. The mean tumor diameter was 4.3±2.7 cm. The median disease-free survival was 37 (range, 28.1 to 48.6) months and the five-year disease-free survival rate was 26.9%. In the multivariate analysis, overall survival and disease-free survival in T2N2M0 subgroup were significantly worse than the other subgroups. The other poor prognostic factors of survival were the standardized uptake value of the tumor, pneumonectomy, and histopathological subtypes other than squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma. Parietal pleural invasion was significantly associated with worse disease-free survival rates.

Conclusion: Our results showed that there may be significant survival differences between subgroups created by tumor histopathology, lymph node invasion and the type of surgery in a heterogeneous lung cancer stage.

Keywords : Non-small cell lung cancer, pathological Stage IIIA, survival, tumor/node/metastasis