Related Experiment Videos
Thoracoscopic surgery and conventional open thoracotomy in metastatic lung cancer
J Nakajima1, S Takamoto, M Tanaka
1Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan. nakajima-tho@h.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Background:
We performed a retrospective comparison of the oncological outcome of thoracoscopic surgery for pulmonary metastasis with that of conventional open thoracotomy.
Methods:
The patient population for our retrospective comparison was comprised of 45 patients undergoing pulmonary resections via video-assisted thoracoscopy (thoracoscopy group) and 55 undergoing similar resections by open thoracotomy (open group) for pulmonary metastases between 1994 and 1999.
Results:
Solitary metastasis was resected more frequently with thoracoscopy than open thoracotomy. There were no significant intergroup differences in rates of local recurrence from the initial pulmonary resection site. The actuarial 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year survival rates were, respectively, 82.8%, 70.0%, and 62.3% in the thoracoscopy group and 93.6%, 64.6%, and 52.7% in the open group. The rates of pulmonary recurrence and survival also did not differ significantly between the two groups with solitary metastases.
Conclusion:
Thoracoscopic surgery for metastatic lung disease appears to be feasible as long as the preoperative metastatic tumor evaluation using chest computed tomography (CT) is accurate.