Clinical analysis of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma and adenocarcinoma with BAC features

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the clinical features, tissue characteristics, treatment modes and prognoses of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma (BAC) and adenocarcinoma with BAC features. METHODS: The clinical data of 71 cases who were underwent operations and diagnosed BAC or adenocarcinoma with BAC features were analyzed. RESULTS: The common symptoms were cough, expectoration, chest pain, haemoptysis, dyspnea and trachyphonia, those were no specific. Patients that had accepted only surgical therapy were 45 cases (63.4%), surgical therapy with adjuvant chemotherapy were 20 cases (28.2%), with adjuvant chemo and radiotherapy were 5 cases (7.0%) and with adjuvant radiotherapy was 1 case (1.4%). The overall 1, 3 and 5-year survival rates were 90.0%, 77.0% and 64.0% respectively. The 5-year survival rates of patients in stage I + II and stage III + IV were 69.7% and 21.4% respectively (P<0.05). The 5-year survival rates of Pure BAC, BAC with regional sokage and adenocarcinoma with BAC features were 91.7%, 76.9% and 54.6% respectively. The 5-year survival rates of whose tumor size ≤3 cm were higher than those tumor size >3 cm (P<0.05). The median survival time was much longer in patients without lymph node metatasis than those with lymph node metatasis (P=0.008). CONCLUSIONS: There are no specific symptoms in BAC and that can be asymptomatic at the early stage. Surgical therapy is the preferred treatment, adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy post operation is unrelated to survival respectively. The size of tumor, N staging, TNM staging, the pathology of BAC are important prognoses factors.