Abstract

Objective: Age, sex, weight loss, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) level, hemoglobin concentration, stage and ECOG performance status (PS) have been accepted as prognostic factors for patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC). In our study, we aim to evaluate the relationship between prognostic factors and survival in patients with SCLC.

Material and Method: A total of 106 patients with SCLC, between 2005 and 2008, were retrospectively analyzed.

Results: The median age of patients at diagnosis was 59.3 and 89.6% of patients were male; 33.1% of patients were older than 65 years and 73 patients were younger than 65 years of age. 54 out of 106 patients had limited stage disease (LSD) (52.9%), and 48 had extended stage disease (ESD) (47.1%). The ratio of PS 0-1 and 2 patients were 77.3% and 22.7% respectively. 36% of them had high serum LDH level and 29.3% had low hemoglobin level. In our study, clinical response was achieved in 71.2% of patients. Overall median survival was 14.2 months. While median survival was 19.7 month in LSD, in ESD it was 9.1 months and stage was found to be prognostic factor in multivariate analysis (p=0.001). Multivariate analysis showed that there were no correlations among median survival and PS, LDH level, weight loss, sex, age (p>0.05).

Conclusion: Although we found no relationship between prognostic factors and median survival and progression free survival, the patients with LSD had more prolonged OS than ESD. Whenever possible, more SCLC patients may be included in future clinical trials to detect the relationship between prognostic factors and overall survival time.