Preoperative Factors for Prediction of EGFR Mutation Status of Lung Cancer

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation status of lung cancer is important because it indicates induction of EGFR-TKI (tyrosine kinase inhibitor) treatment. EGFR mutation has been reported to be strongly related with never-smoker, female, adenocarcinoma and Asians (Lynch et al., 2004; Paez et al., 2004; Pao et al., 2004). There is a striking difference in the frequency of EGFR mutations between Japanese and US patients (32% vs 3-9%) (Hsieh et al., 2005). If EGFR mutation status of lung cancer can be identified without molecular examination of EGFR mutation, it would be very useful for the treatment of lung cancer. Adenocarcinomas with a bronchiolo-alveolar carcinoma (BAC) component are known to be significantly correlated with EGFR mutations (Lynch et al., 2004; Pao et al., 2004; Tam et al., 2006, Sun et al., 2012). The BAC component is likely to have