Clinical Features and Prognosis of 79 Cases of Pulmonary Sarcomatoid Carcinoma

Objective To analyse the clinical data of pulmonary sarcomatoid carcinoma(PSC) and investigate the clinical features and prognostic factors.

Methods The clinical data of 79 cases of pulmonary sarcomatoid carcinoma were analyzed retrospectively. The correlation between prognosis and gender, age, smoking history, primary tumor site, tumor size, location type, T staging, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, TNM staging, histological subtype, therapeutic method, surgery or not were analyzed by statistical software SPSS 19.0. Kaplan-Meier method was used for survival analysis. Log-rank test was used for univariate analysis, and Cox proportional hazard regression model was used to carry out multivariate analysis.

Results PSC patients mainly presented with the symptoms of cough, chest tightness, fever, bloody sputum, hemoptysis, chest pain, which were similar to other types of lung cancer, such as adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and small cell carcinoma. The overall 1-, 2-, 3-year survival rates were 25.3%, 8.0%, 4.8%, respectively. The median survival time was 8.0 months. Univariate analysis showed that age, tumor size, T stage, distant metastasis, TNM staging, treatment and surgery or not were prognostic factors.

Conclusion PSC is a rare, aggressive, poorly-differentiated non-small cell lung cancer, with poor prognosis. Compared with other lung tumors, PSC lacks typical clinical manifestations. The diagnosis mainly depends on pathology and immunohistochemistry. Age, tumor size and therapeutic method are independent prognostic factors. Surgical resection combined with postoperative chemoradiotherapy is the preferred therapeutic method.