The Survival Impact of Second Primary Lung Cancer in Patients With Lung Cancer

Abstract

Background: Lung cancer survivors have a high risk of developing second primary lung cancer (SPLC), but little is known about the survival impact of SPLC diagnosis. Methods: We analyzed data from 138 969 patients in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER), who were surgically treated for initial primary lung cancer (IPLC) in 1988-2013. Each patient was followed from the date of IPLC diagnosis to SPLC diagnosis (for those with SPLC) and last vital status through 2016. We performed multivariable Cox regression to evaluate the association between overall survival and SPLC diagnosis as a time-varying predictor. To investigate potential effect modification, we tested interaction between SPLC and IPLC stage. Using data from the Multiethnic Cohort Study (MEC) (n = 1540 IPLC patients with surgery), we evaluated the survival impact of SPLC by smoking status. All statistical tests were 2-sided. Results: A total of 12 115 (8.7%) patients developed SPLC in SEER over 700 421 person-years of follow-up. Compared with patients with single primary lung cancer, those with SPLC had statistically significantly reduced overall survival (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.12, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.06 to 2.17; P