Anatomic lung resections using minimally invasive thoracic surgery (MITS)

We have designed a minimally invasive thoracic surgery (MITS), which, in this report, we compare to the conventional muscle-sparing thoracotomy (MST). We retrospectively compared 70 consecutive MITS patients (mean age, 65 years) and 70 consecutive MST patients (mean age, 60 years) who underwent thoracotomies for similar pathologies between 1995 and 1997. All comparisons between the MITS and MST groups were made using the Student's t-test. Extubation times, intensive care unit (ICU) stays, analgesia requirements, morbidities/mortalities, hospital lengths of stay (LOS), and cost analyses were all compared. Nine of the 70 planned MITS procedures were converted intraoperatively to MST. All nine of these patients were admitted to the ICU. All of the MST patients spent a minimum of 24 hours in the ICU. The mean LOS in the MITS group was 2.87 days with a mean hospital cost of 6,480.00 dollars, while in the MST group it was 8.28 days (P = 0.003) and 11,490.00 dollars (P = 0.006). There were no deaths and 6 complications in the MITS series. There were two mortalities and 15 complications in the MST patients. Our MITS procedure not only may be performed with low morbidity and cost, it also allows early ambulation and early hospital discharge.