Mediastinal staging for lung cancer: the influence of biopsy volume☆

Mediastinal staging is of paramount importance prior to surgery for non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) to identify patients with N2-disease. Mediastinoscopy remains the gold standard, and sampling from at least three lymph node stations is generally recommended. It is unknown whether biopsy volume has any influence on the result of conventional cervical mediastinoscopy. In this study, we investigated the influence of biopsy volume and the number of lymph node stations biopsied during mediastinoscopy on the probability of demonstrating N2-disease in patients with NSCLC.