Indication for Sublobar Resection in cT1N0 Lung Adenocarcinoma is Contentious

We appreciate the interest and comments for our article, titled “Propensity-Matched Analysis Comparing Survival After Sublobar Resection and Lobectomy for cT1N0 Lung Adenocarcinoma.”1 We agree with the reviewer’s comment that tumor size, particularly the size of the solid component, has an impact on prognosis. We believe that this observation is the key difference between measuring tumor size using the 7th and 8th American Joint Committee on Cancer lung cancer staging system.2 Our study also showed that the solid component diameter is an independent risk factor for tumor recurrence.1 Therefore, we conducted propensity score matching to reduce the heterogeneity of tumor size between the two groups. We acknowledge that there are still pathological and histological differences between lobectomy and sublobar resection groups; however, there is no statistical difference in either total tumor size or solid component size after matching. Based on equally matched clinical features, our results consequently have reference values to some extent. …