For small nodules, whether to use lobectomy or lung segment resection has always been controversial, because the standard surgical method for treating lung cancer is lobectomy plus mediastinal lymph node dissection.
We know that the right side of the human body has a three-lobed lung, the left side has two lobes of the lung, because now found that there are more and more small nodules, less than 1 cm or even less than a few millimeters, less than 2 cm of small nodules, if you cut off a lung lobe, the damage to lung function is a little larger, then in the end can you cut a little smaller? In the past 20 years, everyone has also been exploring, doing a lot of research, a lot of experiments.
Japan collected data on more than 1,000 patients 10 years ago for comparison.
One group of patients did lobectomy, the other group did lung segment resection, the common point is that the lung nodules of these patients are less than 2 cm, the solid component is greater than 50%, it seems that the degree of malignancy is still quite high. Then the solid component is high, which means that the infiltrating component of the tumor is high.
After 10 years of research follow-up, it was found that for this nodule of less than 2 centimeters, after lung segment resection, the patient's overall survival and postoperative disease-free survival effect were similar, and even the curve was slightly better, and the two curves green and red almost completely overlapped.
This shows that lung segment resection is a small-scale resection, which is no disadvantage compared to large-scale resection.
This study was also published in the top medical journal "The Lancet", and is also known as a study that "can change textbooks", because in the previous textbooks, the treatment of lung cancer must be treated with lobectomy plus lymph node dissection.
This also means that in the future, when encountering this small nodule of less than 2 centimeters, only need to do lung segment resection, do not have to do lobectomy, and protect lung function to a greater extent, which is a good thing! Of course, this also needs to be widely recognized by the academic community and further research to verify.