How to deal with subcentimeter lung cancer: a moving target!

In the manuscript “Clinicopathologic features of resected subcentimeter lung cancer” published in the Annals Of Thoracic Surgery 2015;99:1731-8, H. Sakurai and colleagues from the Division of Thoracic Surgery, National Cancer Center Hospital, and Department of General Thoracic Surgery, Keio University Graduate Schoom of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan, describe 291 patients who underwent resection of a subcentimeter lung cancer (1). Tumors were subdivided into 4 categories depending on the percentage of ground-glass opacity (GGO) ranging from 100% GGO (non-solid lesions) to 0% GGO (solid lesions) with partsolid lesions in between. The characteristics of the 4 groups and results of their study are presented in Table 1. Clinically, all tumors were stage IA. A variety of resections was performed with an increasing frequency of lobectomies from group 1 till 4. Conversely, sublobar resections were the most common procedure in groups 1 and 2. Most of these patients underwent wedge resection with anatomical segmentectomy being less frequently performed.