Visceral Pleural Invasion T3 N1 M0 - 1268897

Hi Judy, I certainly hope all cancer is now gone.

I'll let a faculty comment on the implications of you husbands dx. But I want you to note my husband's good fortune with his cancer. You can read my signature below but what it doesn't say is, his primary tumor made his dx stage III and was by most standards (including every person at the cancer center where he was being seen) his tumor was unresectable so was given curable doses of chemo and radiation. With that tx the prognosis was very dire. So later in his story nodules thought to be mets were or weren't mets I guess we'll never know. Today he has no evidence of disease and hasn't had tx in almost 3 years. He's a bit worse for wear and we don't know if the cancer will return but he has bet any prognostic guesses by 1000.

All that to say prognostics are good when looking at the big picture but not so much the individual. A number given as a median means half the people do better. Sometimes it's better to not put too much on those numbers, especially when you're in the waiting and watching mode. Waiting and watching is bad enough, there are things I wish I hadn't made so clear to my husband.

I hope you and he do well and grow and heal together.
Janine
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Well it's great to hear your plan Judy. It is absolutely fine and I'd think preferable to seek out his oncologist's thinking of this. No one can say what he or she may have thought. It's perfectly fine and reasonable to call with questions. Get it out of the way to move on with those small trips. :)

Pleural invasion does make a prognosis less favorable but again that's just a stat of many not the individual. My husband's type tumor has a very bad prognosis. As far as the difference between staging and the type of tumor is either the tumor itself or involved nodules. Anything you've read about pleural invasion is probably applicable to your husband with the addition of whatever made the dx stage III. The following link has a good discussion on stagging. http://cancergrace.org/lung/2010/04/05/an-introduction-to-lung-cancer/

I hope this helps,
Janine

Congratulations on your husband's completing his surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy!
So visceral pleural invasion is a negative prognostic factor, and when seen in a tumor that would otherwise be a T1 tumor (meaning a tumor less than 3 cm), visceral pleural invasion, when present, will "upstage" that tumor to a T2 designation. This is because it demonstrates that while the tumor is quite small, it still has the ability to be invasive and is more likely to spread relative to if it had NOT done so. However, for a lung cancer that is T2N0 (stage IB) with pleural invasion as the only negative prognostic factor, cure rates are quite good. There are several prognostic factors for lung cancer, two of which are size of tumor, and degree of nodal involvement. In the setting of a tumor that is already T3 (likely by virtue of its size being greater than 7cm) and N1 (meaning nodal involvement), it is unlikely that the visceral pleural invasion adds much at all in terms of determining prognosis. The important thing to remember is that this is still a potentially curable cancer that was managed appropriately with aggressive surgery and chemotherapy. Hope this helps.