Résumé : For more than 50 years, small cell lung cancer (SCLC) has been staged mainly as either limited or extensive stage disease. Small published series of resected SCLC have suggested that the tumor, node, metastases (TNM) pathologic staging correlates with the survival of resected patients. Recent analysis of the 8088 cases of SCLC in the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) database demonstrated the usefulness of clinical TNM staging in this malignancy. The IASLC data bank contains an unprecedented number of resected SCLC cases with pathologic staging information. This analysis was undertaken to examine the impact of the TNM system on the pathologic staging of SCLC and to assess the new IASLC proposals in this subtype of lung cancer.