Pulmonary metastases from gastric cancer: Is there any indication for lung metastasectomy? A systematic review

It is still not clear whether pulmonary resection may have a role in the multidisciplinary management of gastric cancer lung metastases. A systematic literature search was performed to identify all studies published between January 1998 and December 2014 about pulmonary resection of gastric cancer metastases. Ten studies published between 1998 and 2013 were retrieved, including a total of 44 patients. After gastrectomy, median disease-free interval was 35 months. Thirty-eight patients had single lung metastases, whereas six presented with more than one lesion. Median overall survival after lung resection was 45 months, and median disease-free survival was 9 months. Our analysis of the recent literature shows that lung metastasectomy for gastric cancer pulmonary metastases has been reported only in the setting of anecdotic cases or small series of highly selected patients. Lung metastasectomy has no role in the standard management of metastatic gastric patients and may actually be proposed only in individual highly selected cases.