| Abstract: |
Almost all patients with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have diffusely metastatic disease, and therefore, the standard of care for NSCLC is chemotherapy or palliative care. A small percentage of patients with newly diagnosed and untreated stage IV disease are found to have a solitary synchronous site of extrathoracic disease, and a small number of patients who have undergone curative resections of intrathoracic disease experience metachronous solitary extrathoracic recurrences. There have been retrospective case reports or limited series that suggest that some such patients may be effectively treated by resection of both the primary tumor and the metastasis. Most of these studies have reported patients with cerebral or adrenal metastases, although there are reports describing the surgical management of metastases to the small bowel, spleen, skeletal muscle, and bone. © 2007 Springer-Verlag London Limited. |
