Impact of pulmonary vein-first ligation during lobectomy on the postoperative survival and recurrence rates in patients with non-small cell lung cancer: a multicenter propensity score-matched study

Surgical manipulation of the lungs increases the number of circulating tumor cells and the subsequent risk of metastasis in patients with lung cancer. This study investigated whether or not ligating the tumor-draining pulmonary vein first during lobectomy could improve the prognosis of these patients.

We retrospectively evaluated patients who underwent curative lobectomy for solitary nonsmall-cell lung carcinoma between January 2012 and December 2016. We divided the patients into the vein-first group, in which all associated pulmonary veins were dissected and severed before cutting the pulmonary artery, bronchus, or pulmonary fissure, and the other procedure group.

Overall, we included 177 and 413 patients in the vein-first and other procedure groups, respectively. Propensity score matching yielded 67 pairs of patients. The 5-year overall survival (85.6% [95% confidence interval, 77.3–94.8%] vs. 69.4% [58.7–81.9%], P = 0.03%) and recurrence-free survival (73.4% [63.3–85.1%] vs. 53.5% [42.5–67.3%], P = 0.02) were significantly better in the vein-first group than in the other procedure group. The cumulative recurrence rate at 5 years post-surgery was significantly lower in the vein-first group than in the other procedure group (21.7% vs. 38.3%, P = 0.04).

Our study suggests that ligating the pulmonary vein first during lobectomy for lung cancer can improve the overall survival, recurrence-free survival, and cumulative recurrence rate.