Segmentectomy After Induction Therapy (SAINT)

With the advent of effective neoadjuvant therapies, many patients with Stage II or III lung cancer are being downstaged to Stage I. Recent studies have shown that sublobar resections, especially segmentectomy, offer superior long-term survival and quality of life for patients with Stage I cancer. However, aside from isolated cases, the safety and feasibility of performing segmentectomy on patients who were initially diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer but were later downstaged to Stage I remain unexplored. Thus, our hypothesis is that segmentectomy can be safely executed in these downstaged Stage I patients after neoadjuvant therapy, without necessitating a conversion to lobectomy due to technical complications. Both segmentectomy and lobectomy are considered standard-of-care lung resection procedures. Recent randomized clinical trials have demonstrated high rates of pathological downstaging for locally advanced lung cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy with R0 resection rates of 83.2% to 77.8% in recent historical controls. Other recent trials demonstrated that high-quality segmentectomy is associated with improved overall survival and is now standard-of-care for early-stage lung cancer with small tumor sizes. Given these findings, the logical next step is to determine if the benefits of high-quality segmentectomy may be extended to an increasingly common clinical scenario where locally advanced lung cancers are downstaged to small tumor size after induction therapy.