Tumor recurrence after surgical resection of NSCLC obstructs
long-term disease-free survival in approximately
50% of cases. Our data suggest that combining circulating
tumor cell enumeration (as single cells or clusters) in tumordraining
pulmonary vein and peripheral blood (assessed by
CellSearch) at the time of NSCLC surgery better identifies
those patients at higher risk for lung cancer recurrence than
does peripheral circulating tumor cell number alone.