Objectives: The systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) is well known to occur in patients who have suffered organ damage or trauma, or undergone surgery. SIRS provides useful information in patients with morbidity after surgery. To date, there has been no report of SIRS after surgery in patients with lung cancer. Therefore, based on this new concept of the syndrome, we review here a series of T3 and T4 NSCLC patients who underwent extended resection at our hospital, and attempt to identify the value and correlation of SIRS in predicting the morbidity of such patients.
Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the patients with NSCLC treated at our hospital between January 1994 and August 2003. Among these 720 patients, a curative approach was attempted in 144 with advanced stage (T3, 100; T4, 44) cancer. The patients were consequently divided into three groups (G1, negative or less than 3 days in SIRS following surgery; G2, less than 7 days; G3, continued over 7 days). Pre- or peri-operative factors were evaluated, and the 5-year survival rates were analyzed. Post-operative morbidity was also compared between the three groups in association with SIRS.
Results: Pre-operative counts of WBC were 8848.28+/-3879.21/microl in G3 compared with 7383.33+/-3132.98/microl in G2 and 6778.31+/-3184.89/microl in G1. Values in G3 were significantly higher than those in the other groups (P<0.001). Predicted %FEV1 in G3 was significantly lower than those in the other groups. Duration of SIRS after lung surgery was associated with high levels in WBC and low %FEV1. Post-operative morbidity such as bronchial fistula or ARDS were more frequent in the G3 and G2 groups than in G1. The 1-year survival was as follows; G1, 75.4%; G2, 47.9%; G3, 38.1%. Overall 5-year survival rate for NSCLC with T3 and T4 was 32.2%, and the difference between G3 and the other groups in terms of survival was statistically significant (P<0.0001).
Conclusions: The concept of SIRS have been associated with post-operative complications and survival in NSCLC. Surgical candidates should be carefully according to the predicting factor of SIRS.