The Impact of Preoperative Invasive Nodal Staging on Unexpected Mediastinal Upstaging in Early-Stage Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

This study evaluated the effect of perioperative invasive nodal staging on nodal upstaging in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients undergoing resection. Out of 2,576 patients, only 18.7 percent underwent invasive nodal staging, with less than one percent experience unexpected N2 upstaging after surgery, and no association was found between the absence of perioperative nodal sampling and occurrence of N2 or IIIA+ disease. The findings suggest that perioperative invasive nodal staging did not significantly impact the rate of pathological N2 upstaging in early-stage NSCLC patients within the study’s health system.