Early Stage Lung Cancer: Progress in the Last 40 Years

Surgery remains the cornerstone in the early-stage non– small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treatment, but a lot of efforts have been focused on the use of systemic therapy in this setting, on technological advances in thoracic surgery and radiotherapy, and on better application of local therapeutic approaches to improve the survival rates in these patients. The aim of this article is to provide a synthetic overview of the scientific achievements characterizing this setting during the past 40 years (Figure 1).