In the February issue of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Atorki and coworkers  compared the overall survival in two matched series of stage IA solid NSCLC cases diagnosed in the I-ELCAP study. Lobectomy was indicated in 294 cases and sublobar resection in 53. For those patients with solid tumours 20 mm or less in diameter, the type of resection had no influence on 10-year survival. The debate about the role of sublobar resection in the treatment of early-stage NSCLC has to be solved by the ongoing radomised clinical trials in different parts of the World.