BACKGROUNDLung cancer is still the most common cause of cancer death. Although it is reported that the 5-year survival rate for lung cancer has been greatly increased, surgical results are controversial. The aim of this study is to investigate and evaluate the improvement of survival of lung cancer surgically intervened in PUMC hospital during the last 15 years.

METHODSFrom January 1989 to December 2003, 1574 cases of lung cancer underwent surgical treatment and obtained follow-up. The results were retrospectively a- nalysed . All cases in this series were divided into two groups according to time, group A (1999-2003) and group B (1989-1998), and the differences of survival rate between group A and group B were compared.

RESULTSThe morbidity and mortality of group A decreased significantly when compared to group B (11.2% vs 19.2%, 1.06% vs 1.93%, respectively, P < 0.01). However, the 3- and 5-year survival rates had been obviously raised from 42.35% to 56.07%, and from 28.46% to 38.99%, respectively (P < 0.05 ). A significant improvement in survival was observed in patients with stageI, stage II and stage IIIA, but not in stage IIIB and stage IV. Also, the patients with lobectomy had better results but those with exploratory thoracotomy, limited resection, pneumonectomy and sleeve resection did not show better results.

CONCLUSIONSLobectomy associated with systematic dissection of mediastinal lymph nodes has become the standard mode for the resectable lung cancer. Combination of complete resection and lymph nodes dissection, with postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy based on platinum/3rd generation medicine, have preliminarily been justified and proved an important approach for effective improvement of long-term survival of lung cancer.