Adjuvant radiation therapy and re-resection are considered to be two potential treatment options for patients with NSCLC who undergo lobectomy and have positive margins, wrote Dr. Gulack and his coauthors.
However, guidelines from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network recommend re-resection when possible, they added.
The retrospective analysis by Dr. Gulack and his colleagues was based on information in the National Cancer Data Base, which collects data from more than 1,500 hospitals.
The investigators identified 49,563 patients with stage I-II NSCLC who received lobectomy with no induction therapy between 1998 and 2006. Of those patients, 1,934 (3.9%) had positive margins, the authors reported.