title: Surgical resection of pulmonary metastases.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  To review the results of complete surgical resection of pulmonary metastasis -- a ten-year experience.
  
  
  METHODS
  Retrospective analysis of all patients with lung secondaries who received complete surgical resection of pulmonary metastases (from 1984 to 1995) in Grantham Hospital, Hong Kong. Sixty patients over a 10-year period were studied.
  
  
  METHODS
  Eighty thoracotomies were performed with 88 tumour nodules excised. The follow-up period ranged from 5 months to 111 months.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Thirteen (14.8%) specimens were found to have tumour size greater than 5.0 cm. This may reflect late detection of metastatic tumour and probably accounts for the higher percentage of our patients receiving more major lung resections (63.3%) than just wedge resections (36.6%). The mean survival period for the subgroup with hepatocellular carcinoma was 28.2 months and for the nasopharyngeal carcinoma group was 25 months. The mean survival of the whole group was 26.4 months.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The favourable outcome for hepatocellular carcinoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma could be due to the result of selection of patients with more favourable prognosis for surgery. The latent period, using 12 months as a break-off point, did not affect patient survival in our study.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: L C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Chiu
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000556:secondary* / Q000601:surgery*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D015996:Survival Rate