Background: The best therapy for patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are medically unfit for lobectomy or prefer not to undergo surgery has not yet been demonstrated. Objectives: We analyzed data from our prospective database to evaluate the recurrence and survival rates and assess the extent to which the type of treatment explains outcome differences. Methods: This study included 116 patients with histologically proven clinical stage I NSCLC who were treated with sublobar resection (SLR; n = 42), radiofrequency ablation (RFA; n = 25) or radiotherapy (RT; n = 49) between 2009 and 2013. The primary end point was the time to primary tumor recurrence (PR). Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox regression were used to compare the recurrence patterns and survivals after adjustments for potential confounders. Results: The SLR patients were younger and exhibited better performance status. The RT patients had larger tumors. After adjusting for age and tumor size, there were differences between the different treatments in terms of the PR rate, but no differences were observed in overall (OS) or disease-free survival. The hazard ratio for PR comparing SLR versus RT adjusted for age and tumor size was 2.73 (95% confidence interval, CI, 0.72-10.27) and that for SLR versus RFA was 7.57 (95% CI 1.94-29.47). Conclusions: Our study suggests that SLR was associated with a higher primary tumor control rate compared to RFA or RT, although the OSs were not different. These results should be confirmed in prospective trials.
