A Real-World Assessment of Stage I Lung Cancer Through Electronic Nose Technology.

INTRODUCTION: Electronic nose (E-nose) technology has reported excellent sensitivity and specificity in the setting of lung cancer screening. However, the performance of E-nose specifically for early-stage tumors remains unclear. Therefore, the aim of our study was to assess the diagnostic performance of E-nose technology in clinical stage I lung cancer. METHODS: This phase IIc trial (NCT04734145) included patients diagnosed with a single greater than or equal to 50% solid stage I nodule. Exhalates were prospectively collected from January 2020 to August 2023. Blinded bioengineers analyzed the exhalates, using E-nose technology to determine the probability of malignancy. Patients were stratified into three risk groups (low-risk, [<0.2]; moderate-risk, [≥0.2-0.7]; high-risk, [≥0.7]). The primary outcome was the diagnostic performance of E-nose versus histopathology (accuracy and F1 score). The secondary outcome was the clinical performance of the E-nose versus clinicoradiological prediction models. RESULTS: Based on the predefined cutoff (<0.20), E-nose agreed with histopathologic results in 86% of cases, achieving an F1 score of 92.5%, based on 86 true positives, two false negatives, and 12 false positives (n = 100). E-nose would refer fewer patients with malignant nodules to observation (low-risk: 2 versus 9 and 11, respectively; p = 0.028 and p = 0.011) than would the Swensen and Brock models and more patients with malignant nodules to treatment without biopsy (high-risk: 27 versus 19 and 6, respectively; p = 0.057 and p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: In the setting of clinical stage I lung cancer, E-nose agrees well with histopathology. Accordingly, E-nose technology can be used in addition to imaging or as part of a "multiomics" platform.

Incidence and management of esophageal cancer recurrence to regional lymph nodes after curative esophagectomy.

Up to 50% of patients treated with curative esophagectomy for esophageal cancer will develop recurrence, contributing to the dismal survival associated with this disease. Regional recurrence may represent disease that is not yet widely metastatic and may therefore be amenable to more-aggressive treatment. We sought to assess all patients treated with curative esophagectomy for esophageal cancer who developed regional recurrence. We retrospectively identified all patients who underwent esophagectomy for esophageal adenocarcinoma and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma at a single institution from January 2000 to August 2019. In total, 1626 patients were included in the study cohort. As of June 2022, 595 patients had disease recurrence, which was distant or systemic in 435 patients (27%), regional in 125 (7.7%) and local in 35 (2.2%). On multivariable analysis, neoadjuvant chemoradiation with a total radiation dose <45 Gy (hazard ratio [HR], 3.5 [95% CI, 1.7-7.3]; P = .001), pathologic node-positive disease (HR, 1.9 [95% CI, 1.3-3.0]; P = .003) and lymphovascular invasion (HR, 1.6 [95% CI, 1.0-2.5]; P = .049) were predictors of isolated nodal recurrence, whereas increasing age (HR, 0.97 [95% CI, 0.96-0.99]; P = .001) and increasing number of excised lymph nodes (HR, 0.98 [95% CI, 0.95-1.00]; P = .021) were independently associated with decreased risk of regional recurrence. Patients treated with a combination of local and systemic therapies had better survival outcomes than patients treated with systemic therapy alone (P < .001). In patients with recurrence of esophageal cancer limited to regional lymph nodes, salvage treatment may be possible. Higher radiation doses and more-extensive lymphadenectomy may reduce the risk of regional recurrence.

Ongoing Challenges with Clinical Assessment of Nodal Status in T1 Esophageal Adenocarcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) has emerged as an esophageal-preserving treatment for T1 esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC); however, only patients with negligible risk of lymph node metastasis (LNM) are eligible. Reliable clinical diagnostic tools for LNM are lacking, as such, several risk assessment scores have been developed. The purpose of this study was to externally validate 2 previously published risk scores (Lee and Weksler) for clinical prediction of LNM in T1 EAC patients. METHODS: In adherence with the Lee and Weksler scores, esophagectomy patients with pathologic T1 EAC were identified. Sub-analysis was performed in patients with clinical T1 based on EMR. Predictive accuracy of the scores was evaluated by calculating the area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic curve and calibration plots. The areas under the curves were compared using Venkatraman's test for paired receiver operating characteristic curves. RESULTS: Of 233 patients identified who met study criteria for external validation, 3 T1a and 32 T1b patients had LNM. The receiver operating characteristic curves demonstrated comparable high predictive and discriminatory capabilities with areas under the curves of 0.832 and 0.824 for the Lee and Weksler scores, respectively (p = 0.750). Results were more variable for the EMR cohort. Based on the risk thresholds defined by each score, the false-positive rate compared against the pathologic LNM status were 73% and 56% for Lee and Weksler, with 3% false negatives in the latter. On EMR, the false-positive rates were 70% and 50% for Lee and Weksler, with no false negatives. CONCLUSIONS: Both scoring systems demonstrated good discriminatory ability and predictive accuracy for LNM, but the defined thresholds resulted in a high false-positive rate. A better scoring system based on clinical characteristics is needed to better identify patients with local disease.