Awake operative videothoracoscopic pulmonary resections

The authors' initial experience with awake videothoracoscopic lung resection suggests that these procedures can be easily and safely performed under sole thoracic epidural anesthesia with no mortality and negligible morbidity. One major concern was that operating on a ventilating lung would render surgical maneuvers more difficult because of the lung movements and lack of a sufficient operating space. Instead, the open pneumothorax created after trocar insertion produces a satisfactory lung collapse that does not hamper surgical maneuvers. These results contradict the accepted assumption that the main prerequisite for allowing successful thoracoscopic lung surgery is general anesthesia with one-lung ventilation. No particular training is necessary to accomplish an awake pulmonary resection for teams experienced in thoracoscopic surgery, and conversions to general anesthesia are mainly caused by the presence of extensive fibrous pleural adhesions or the development of intractable panic attacks. Overall, awake pulmonary resection is easily accepted and well tolerated by patients, as confirmed by the high anesthesia satisfaction score, which was better than in nonawake control patients. Nonetheless, thoracic epidural anesthesia has potential complications, including epidural hematoma, spinal cord injury, and phrenic nerve palsy caused by inadvertently high anesthetic level, but these never occurred in the authors' experience. Further concerns relate to patient participation in operating room conversations or risk for development of perioperative panic attacks. However, the authors have found that reassuring the patient during the procedure, explaining step-by-step what is being performed, and even showing the ongoing procedure on the operating video can greatly improve the perioperative wellness and expectations of patients, particularly if the procedure is performed for oncologic diseases. Panic attacks occurred in few patients and could be usually managed through moderately increasing the depth of sedation while maintaining spontaneous breathing. Finally, as long as the physiologic impact of awake metastasectomy is definitively elucidated, the authors believe this modality should be used for unilateral procedures, while deserving a staged bilateral approach for bilateral lung metastasectomy. Avoidance of general anesthesia results in a faster recovery with immediate return to many daily life activities, including drinking, eating, and walking, and a reduction in hospital stay and procedure-related costs. If confirmed with future studies, these results could advocate earlier resection of peripheral solitary pulmonary nodules, reducing the risk for delaying a diagnosis of unexpected pulmonary malignancy. Furthermore, potential new frontiers of awake thoracoscopic surgery might include assessment of feasibility and safety of anatomic resections in properly selected instances. Ethical and economical concerns push remorselessly for less frequent and less-invasive surgery. Administrators advocate minimal hospitalization and cost-saving treatments, whereas patients ultimately ask for appropriate health care. Thoracic surgeons of the third millennium must accept the challenge of this dynamic and rapidly evolving scenario without loosing the right root, which probably lays just between well-established conventional surgery techniques and newly available advanced technology tools. Awake thoracic surgery will benefit from evidence-based data that are progressively accumulating. Findings will stimulate experts to continue an active clinical investigation in this unpredictably evolving surgical field, which might ultimately lead to a better understanding of cardiorespiratory physiology and effects of the surgical pneumothorax and thoracic epidural anesthesia on perioperative, respiratory function in awake patients. As the Italian architect Renzo Piano recently stated, "Recovering in the past can be reassuring but the future is the only place where we can go."