A review of resected pleomorphic carcinoma cases

Abstract

Background. Primary lung pleomorphic carcinoma is a rare entity showing a poor prognosis. We investigated the clinicopathological characteristics of lung pleomorphic carcinoma in our surgical cases. Subjects and Methods. A total of 14 patients who underwent surgery with curative intent for lung pleomorphic carcinoma at our institution between January 2005 and December 2015 were reviewed. Results. The study included 14 patients (12 men and 2 women) with the mean age of 69.5 years. Lobectomy was performed on 13 patients and seg-mentectomy on 1. The pathological diagnosis was stage I in 4 patients, stage II in 6, and stage III or higher in 4. Tumor recurrence was found in 8 patients who all died of recurrent cancer. The 5-year overall survival rate was 21.0% for all patients. An immunohistochemical study of the resected tumor revealed the expression of programmed cell-death ligand 1 (PD-L1) in 12 patients, 5 of whom had tumors strongly expressing PD-L1. The further accumulation of cases will hopefully help clarify the details of primary lung pleomorphic carcinoma.