In the recent study by Dediu et al. it was reported that
patients with atelectasis had a favorable prognosis
mainly in locally advanced NSCLC (3). In contrast
to these data, only Coen at al. reported that survival
was not different in patients with atelectasis (8).
The effect of atelectasis was also investigated in
stage IB tumors; however, it has been shown that
presence of atelectasis in those patients has no impact
on survival (9,10).