Ding N, et al. - Researchers retrospectively examined patients with clinical stage IA non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) who had undergone anatomical lobectomy with systematic lymph node dissection at their center to determine patterns of lymph node metastasis and risk factors predicting lymph node metastasis in these subjects. The identified significant predictors of lymph node metastasis in these patients included tumor size, solid components, poor differentiation, lymphovascular invasion, visceral pleural invasion and smoking history. In patients with negative lobe-specific lymph node, a very low risk of metastasis to the non-lobe specific lymph nodes was observed. For clinical stage IA NSCLC, especially for tumors ≤2 cm, lobe-specific lymph node dissection was suggested to be an alternative lymph node dissection mode.