Abstract

To determine the factors affecting prognosis in lung cancer patients with synchronous or metachronous brain metastasis, 103 lung can­cer patients (6 female, 97 male; mean age 52.75±8.87 years) with brain metastases were examined prospectively with regard to diffe­rences in survival. Histopathology of the tumor, performance status (PS), sex, locali­zation of tumor, localization of metastases, time period between di­agnosis and brain metastases, presence of distant metastases, presen­ce of lung symptoms during brain metastases, and treatment moda­lity of the brain metastases were evaluated with regard to survival period. Kaplan-Meier, Cox-regression tests were used in the statis­tical analyses. Sixty two patients (60.2%) were diagnosed as small-cell lung can­cer and 41 (39.8%) as non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Medi­an survival after brain metastases was 3 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 2 to 4). The brain metastasis was diagnosed at the sa­me time as the lung cancer in 29 patients (28.2%) and at a later da­te in 74 (71.8%). Brain metastases synchronous with lung cancer and a better PS score were found to be parameters significantly cor­related with a better survival (wald x2= 8.707, p= 0.003; wald x2=20.809, p= 0.000; respectively). Survival was also significantly longer in patients with SCLC (wald x2=4-255, p= 0.039). The fin­dings indicate that PS of the patient, histopathology of the tumor, and the time period between the diagnosis of the lung cancer and that of the brain metastases are all factors affecting survival.