Impact of High‑Grade Patterns in Early‑Stage Lung Adenocarcinoma: A Multicentric Analysis

Objective The presence of micropapillary and solid adenocarcinoma patterns leads to a worse survival and a signifcantly higher tendency to recur. This study aims to assess the impact of pT descriptor combined with the presence of high-grade components on long-term outcomes in early-stage lung adenocarcinomas. Methods We retrospectively collected data of consecutive resected pT1-T3N0 lung adenocarcinoma from nine European Thoracic Centers. All patients who underwent a radical resection with lymph-node dissection between 2014 and 2017 were included. Diferences in Overall Survival (OS) and Disease-Free Survival (DFS) and possible prognostic factors associated with outcomes were evaluated also after performing a propensity score matching to compare tumors containing non-highgrade and high-grade patterns. Results Among 607 patients, the majority were male and received a lobectomy. At least one high-grade histological pattern was seen in 230 cases (37.9%), of which 169 solid and 75 micropapillary. T1a-b-c without high-grade pattern had a signifcant better prognosis compared to T1a-b-c with high-grade pattern (p=0.020), but the latter had similar OS compared to T2a (p=0.277). Concurrently, T1a-b-c without micropapillary or solid patterns had a signifcantly better DFS compared to those with high-grade patterns (p=0.034), and it was similar to T2a (p=0.839). Multivariable analysis confrms the role of T descriptor according to high-grade pattern both for OS (p=0.024; HR 1.285 95% CI 1.033–1.599) and DFS (p=0.003; HR 1.196, 95% CI 1.054–1.344, respectively). These results were confrmed after the propensity score matching analysis. Conclusions pT1 lung adenocarcinomas with a high-grade component have similar prognosis of pT2a tumors.