Reply to the letter to the editor Commernt on Pre-and intra -operative mediastinal staging in non-small-cell long cancer

摘要

In response to the comments by von Gamier, I would like to give some precise comments and point out some aspects in the interpretation of the study by Annema et al. 1. The study shows that endoscopic mediastinal staging followed by surgical staging (mediastinoscopy) has a better accuracy than mediastinoscopy alone and than endoscopic staging alone. There was no significant statistical difference between surgical staging alone and endoscopic staging alone. In the combination of both staging procedures, an increase of staging accuracy was a result of surgical staging following endoscopic staging, since mediastinoscopy revealed a false negative value of 9.2% after endoscopic techniques. This underlines the important role of surgical staging.