Lung lobectomy is the gold standard of surgical treatment for lung cancer, but there is a great debate whether pulmonary wedge resection is feasible for high-risk patients, such as those of advanced age, poor cardiopulmonary function, and combined with small peripheral type tumors. Identifying predictors of poor prognosis after pulmonary wedge resection can help clinicians exclude some patients who are not suitable for pulmonary wedge resection. With this in mind, Dr. Michael Poullis from Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital in the United Kingdom investigated whether patient gender and tumor pathology type were associated with prognosis in patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer undergoing lung wedge resection using various methods including Cox regression analysis and propensity analysis. The results of the study were published online in the January 2014 issue of EurJCardiothoracSurg. The retrospective study included 540 patients with stage I lung adenocarcinoma and squamous lung cancer treated with pulmonary wedge resection, and univariate analysis showed that male patients had a worse prognosis than female patients, with no significant difference in prognosis between adenocarcinoma and squamous cancer patients, and subgroup analysis according to gender showed no significant correlation between different pathological types for either male or female prognosis. Dr. Poullis et al. also performed a multifactorial Cox regression analysis, which showed that patients with adenocarcinoma who underwent lung wedge resection had a worse prognosis than patients with squamous carcinoma. A subgroup analysis based on patients showed that the prognosis of adenocarcinoma patients was significantly worse than that of squamous carcinoma patients in male patients, whereas this difference was not present in female patients. The study was matched 1:1 by gender, and a total of 124 pairs of lung wedge resection patients were further propensity-matched, which revealed that patient gender was not associated with prognosis, whereas pathology type was significantly associated with patient prognosis in male patients, whereas in female patients, pathology type was not associated with prognosis. The study was further matched 1:1 by different pathological types, i.e. adenocarcinoma versus squamous carcinoma patients, and a total of 140 pairs of lung wedge resection patients were analyzed for propensity matching, which showed that gender did not correlate with patient survival prognosis, whereas pathological type correlated with patient prognosis, and in male patients, pathological type correlated with prognosis, whereas for female patients, pathological type did not correlate with prognosis. In conclusion, Dr. Poullis et al. concluded that the prognosis of patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer undergoing lung wedge resection was correlated with gender and pathology type, and that male adenocarcinoma patients undergoing lung wedge resection had a poorer prognosis, and therefore caution should be exercised in these patients undergoing lung wedge resection.