RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 LobE-Specific lymph node diSsectiON for clinical early-stage non-small cell lung cancer: protocol for a randomised controlled trial (the LESSON trial) JF BMJ Open JO BMJ Open FD British Medical Journal Publishing Group SP e056043 DO 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056043 VO 12 IS 8 A1 Weijia Huang A1 Han-Yu Deng A1 Zhi-Zhen Ren A1 Kai Xu A1 Yi-Feng Wang A1 Xiaojun Tang A1 Da-Xing Zhu A1 Qinghua Zhou YR 2022 UL http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/8/e056043.abstract AB Introduction Lung cancer was the most common malignancy and the leading cause of cancer-related death in China or worldwide, and surgery is still the preferred treatment for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The pattern of lymph node metastasis was found potentially lobe specific, and thus, lobe-specific lymph node dissection (L-SLND) was proposed to be an alternative to systematic lymph node dissection (SLND) for the treatment of early-stage NSCLC.Methods and analysis The LobE-Specific lymph node diSsectiON trial is a single-institutional, randomised, double-blind and parallel controlled trial to investigate the feasibility of L-SLND in clinically diagnosed stage IA1-2 NSCLC with ground-glass opacity components (≥50%). The intraoperative frozen section examination of surgical tissues confirms the histological type of NSCLC. We hypothesise that L-SLND (experimental group) is not inferior to SLND (control group) and intend to include 672 participants for the experimental group and 672 participants for the control group with a follow-up duration of 60 months. The primary outcomes are 5-year disease-free survival and 5-year overall survival. The secondary outcomes are metastatic lymph node ratio, postoperative complication incidence and mortality, duration of operation, duration of anaesthesia (min), the volume of bleeding (mL) and drainage volume. The intention-to-treat analysis would be performed in the trial.Ethics and dissemination This trial was approved by the ethics committee on biomedical research, West China Hospital of Sichuan University (2021-332). Informed consent would be obtained from all participants, and dissemination activities would include academic conference presentations and peer-reviewed publications.Trial registration number This trial was registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ChiCTR2100048415.