The current study presents the case of a 41-year-old female patient who received modified radical mastectomy and adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy for infiltrating ductal cancer of the left breast. The pathological stage of the disease was IIA. In addition, the patient was negative for the estrogen and progesterone receptors, and human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 gene amplification was identified. At one year following surgery, the patient presented with severe pancytopenia and pain at multiple sites all over the body. Furthermore, the patient’s Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status score was 3 and numeric rating scale pain score was 8. The bone marrow puncture indicated bone marrow metastatic cancer, and the positron emission tomography/computed tomography (CT) indicated multiple internal organ metastases and osseous metastasis. Chemotherapy treatment posed great risks due to the patient’s poor performance status and severe bone marrow suppression. Therefore, trastuzumab monotherapy was administered at a loading dose of 8 mg/kg and a maintenance dose of 6 mg/kg every three weeks. Following four doses of trastuzumab treatment, the patient’s performance status significantly improved and the peripheral blood cell counts had returned to within the normal ranges. Taxol was added to the trastuzumab treatment and seven cycles were completed. No metastatic cancer cells were found in the subsequent bone marrow smear test; however, CT showed metastatic foci in the left lung. Furthermore, the enlarged lymph nodes had subsided and the tumor in the right appendix region had decreased in size by 50%. The patient’s disease condition was maintained stable for 11 months.

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The role of surgery in small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is controversial. This study explored whether surgery offered a survival benefits for patients with SCLC.Patients diagnosed with SCLC between 2010 and 2015 were selected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. The tumor, node, and metastasis (TNM) stage of SCLC in these patients was reclassified according to the 8th edition of the TNM classification for lung cancer. Overall survival (OS) was separately compared according to TNM stage between patients who underwent surgery and those who did not using Kaplan–Meier method. A Cox regression model was used to identify relevant variables affecting survival. Additional Kaplan–Meier curves were created to compare different types of surgery. Cox regression models and Forest plots were used to identify the predictors of survival in the surgery cohort.A total of 26,659 patients with SCLC were included, among which 627 (2.4%) patients underwent surgery. Surgery was associated with longer survival in patients with stage IA (45.0 vs 20.0 months, P < .001), stage IB (47.0 vs 19.0 months, P = .001), stage IIA (16.0 m vs NR, P = .007), stage III (18.0 vs 12.0 months, P < .001), and stage IV (9.0 vs 5.0 months, P < .001) disease, although the difference was not statistically significant for patients with stage IIB disease. Multivariate analysis identified surgery as an independent predictor of improved survival for all cohorts divided by stages except for stage IIB. Lobectomy was the most commonly performed procedure. Multivariate analysis in patients who underwent surgery identified lobectomy (hazard ratio [HR], 0.544; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.341–0.869; P = .011) and chemotherapy (HR, 0.634; 95% CI, 0.487–0.827; P < .001) as independent predictors of improved survival in the surgery cohort.In a national analysis, surgery was performed in some patients for both early and advanced-stage SCLC. Surgery for SCLC was associated with improved survival except for patients with stage IIB disease. These results support an increased role of surgery in multimodal therapy for SCLC.

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