Clinical characteristics of patients in study
| Characteristic | |
| Patients n | 229 |
| Age mean±sd years | 67±8.9 |
| Sex | |
| Male | 148 (65) |
| Female | 81 (35) |
| Diagnostic workup prior to endoscopy | |
| FDG-PET-CT | 211 (92) |
| Bronchoscopy | 135 (59) |
| Tumour stage PET/CT | |
| cT1 | 73 (32) |
| cT2 | 99 (43) |
| cT3 | 50 (22) |
| cT4 | 7 (3) |
| Nodal status PET/CT | |
| cN0 | 35 (15) |
| cN1 | 37 (16) |
| cN2 | 129 (57) |
| cN3 | 28 (12) |
| Final histopathology data | |
| NSCLC (epithelial tumours) | |
| Squamous cell carcinoma | 88 (38) |
| Adenocarcinoma | 77 (34) |
| NSCLC-NOS | 21 (9) |
| Adenosquamous carcinoma | 1 (0.5) |
| Other: sarcomatoid carcinoma | 1 (0.5) |
| Neuroendocrine tumours | |
| Small cell carcinoma | 11 (5) |
| LCNEC | 6 (3) |
| Suspected lung cancer# | 8 (3) |
| Benign lesion | 14 (6) |
| Other¶ | 2 (1) |
Data are presented as n (%), unless otherwise stated. The 7th TNM edition of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) was used for staging. FDG: (18)F-2-deoxy-2-fluoro-d-glucose; PET-CT: positron emission tomography-computed tomography; NSCLC: nonsmall cell lung cancer; NOS: not otherwise specified; LCNEC: large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma. #: suspicion of lung cancer based on clinical presentation in combination with imaging characteristics (PET-CT) in the absence of tissue proof of malignancy; ¶: lymphoma and metastasis of extrathoracic tumour.