Does the Amount of Malignant Pleural Effusion affect the Survival in Patients with Non-small Cell Lung Cancer?

Shota Nakamura^1*, Takayuki Fukui¹, Koji Kawaguchi¹, Toshiki Okasaka¹, Koichi Fukumoto², Tetsunari Hase², Yoshinori Hasegawa², Akihiro Hirakawa³ and Kohei Yokoi¹

¹Department of Thoracic Surgery, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

²Department of Respiratory Medicine, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

³Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Section, Center for Advanced Medicine and Clinical Research, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

^*Corresponding Author: Shota Nakamura, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, 65 Tsurumai-cho Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan, Tel: +81-52-744-2375, Fax: +81-52-744-2382 Email:

Keywords: Lung cancer; Pleural carcinomatosis; TNM classification; Pleural effusion

Introduction