Assessment of the Prognostic Factors in Patients with Pulmonary Carcinoid Tumor: a Population-based Study

Previous studies have identified potential risk factors for pulmonary carcinoid tumors and evaluated the effect of various treatments; however, the results were not entirely consistent. We conducted a population-based study to further explore relevant prognostic issues. We extracted cases with pulmonary carcinoid tumors from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results database. Cox proportional hazard regression was utilized to identify potential significant risk factors, which helped establish a nomogram for predicting long-term survival. Survival analysis and a competing risk study were conducted to evaluate the value of different surgical approaches. There were 7057 cases included in the study. Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that age, sex, tumor size, stage, histology, surgical type, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy were all significant prognostic factors. A nomogram with good accuracy for predicting 10-year survival was formulated. Furthermore, patients who had undergone surgery had a significantly better survival than those who did not undergo surgery. There was no significant prognostic difference between lobectomy and sublobectomy stratified by tumor stage; however, lobectomy was associated with a significantly better survival in atypical tumors, especially those with regional disease. Our research identified possible risk factors in a large cohort and constructed a nomogram to visually predict 10-year survival of pulmonary carcinoid tumors. We showed that lobectomy and sublobectomy should be considered as the mainstay of treatment, especially lobectomies for atypical tumor.