Clinical Characteristics, Treatment and Prognosis of 47 Non-small Cell Lung Cancer with Neuroendocrine Differentiation Patients

Abstract

Background and objective Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with neuroendocrine differentiation (NED) was a new pathologic type and uncommon in clinics. The aim of this study is to observe the relationship between clinical pathologic characteristics, imagination, biological behavior and prognosis in NSCLC-NED. Methods The clinical data of 47 patients with NSCLC-NED admitted from January 2009 to November 2017 in the Fifth Medical Center of General Hospital of People's Liberation Army were collected. The demographic data and imaging characteristics were summarized. Pathological features, treatment and prognosis, analysis of the correlation between different factors and prognosis. Results Of the 47 patients with NSCLC-NED, the median age was 61 years (45 years-78 years), 38 males and 9 females; 37 were poorly differentiated cancer with NED, and 10 were middle differentiated cancer with NED; 2 cases of driving gene positive (1 case of EGFR sensitive mutation, 1 case of ALK fusion), objective response rate (ORR) of first-line chemotherapy was 34.5%, and median progression-free survival (PFS) was 4 months; the median overall survival (OS) was 11 months, and only 2 cases (4.2%, 2/47) of OS were over 2 years. Conclusion NSCLC-NED is different from simple NSCLC or pulmonary neuroendocrine tumors. Males, ≤70 years old, severely smoking, and patients with lower tumor differentiation often have NED, and most of them are stage IV. This type of patient-driven gene positive proportion is lower than the general adenocarcinoma population, less sensitive to chemotherapy, and the overall survival is shorter, indicating a poor prognosis.

Keywords

• Lung neoplasms
• Neuroendocrine differentiation
• Driver gene
• Prognosis