Uniportal video-assisted thoracic surgery lowers the incidence of post-thoracotomy pain syndrome.

Abstract

We compared post-thoracotomy pain syndrome (PTPS) incidence in patients who underwent uniportal or multiportal video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS). We included 223 patients who underwent either uniportal or multiportal VATS between January 2017 and October 2018 (pulmonary lobectomies and pulmonary segmentectomies-uniportal: n=19, multiportal: n=133; wedge lung resections-uniportal: n=16, multiportal: n=55). We retrospectively studied incidences of PTPS in all subgroups. Incidences of PTPS were significantly less for uniportal procedures for both the pulmonary lobectomy/segmentectomy group (P=0.024) and the wedge lung resection group (P=0.0315) than for multiportal procedures. Patients who underwent uniportal VATS procedures had lower incidences of PTPS than the multiportal VATS group. The uniportal VATS approach is therefore beneficial for patients.