Article Text
Abstract
Introduction Conflicting results exist regarding whether preoperative transthoracic biopsy increases the risk of pleural recurrence in early lung cancer. We conducted a systematic, patient-level meta-analysis to evaluate the risk of pleural recurrence in stage I lung cancer after percutaneous transthoracic lung biopsy.
Methods A systematic search of OVID-MEDLINE, Embase and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was performed through October 2018. Eligible studies were original articles on the risk of pleural recurrence in stage I lung cancer after transthoracic biopsy. We contacted the corresponding authors of eligible studies to obtain individual patient-level data. We used the Fine-Gray model for time to recurrence and lung cancer-specific survival and a Cox proportional hazards model for overall survival.
Results We analysed 2394 individual patient data from 6 out of 10 eligible studies. Compared with other diagnostic procedures, transthoracic biopsy was associated with a higher risk for ipsilateral pleural recurrence, which manifested solely (subdistribution HR (sHR), 2.58; 95% CI 1.15 to 5.78) and concomitantly with other metastases (sHR 1.99; 95% CI 1.14 to 3.48). In the analysis of secondary outcomes considering a significant interaction between diagnostic procedures and age groups, reductions of time to recurrence (sHR, 2.01; 95% CI 1.11 to 3.64), lung cancer-specific survival (sHR 2.53; 95% CI 1.06 to 6.05) and overall survival (HR 2.08; 95% CI 1.12 to 3.87) were observed in patients younger than 55 years, whereas such associations were not observed in other age groups.
Discussion Preoperative transthoracic lung biopsy was associated with increased pleural recurrence in stage I lung cancer and reduced survival in patients younger than 55 years.
- lung cancer
- pleural disease
- non-small cell lung cancer
Data availability statement
Data are available on reasonable request to the corresponding author.
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Data availability statement
Data are available on reasonable request to the corresponding author.
Footnotes
Contributors HH, SH and SHY conceived the study concept and design. HH and SHY undertook the literature searches and study selection. HM, MI, YS, OH, YI, KA, HA, TI and K-JL contributed to collecting individual participant data. HH, SHY cleaned and checked data quality. HH, SH and SHY conducted the meta-analyses. All authors contributed to the interpretation of data. HH, SH and SHY wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content and approved the final version of the manuscript. The corresponding author attests that all listed authors meet authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criteria have been omitted.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests SHY works a chief medical officer in MEDICALIP since November 2020 outside this work. CMP received a research grant from Lunit outside this work.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.