Minimal Invasive Thoracic Surgery Research Articles

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, while in the MST group it was 8.28 days ( P = 0.003) and $11,490.00 ( 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.

Video-Assisted Minimal Invasive Thoracic Surgery: A Review of 81 Surgical Procedure

Video-assisted minima11y invasive thoracic surgery (VAMIS) is a new procedure that allows visualisation of and access to the intrathoracic organs without a thoracotomy incision. 81 consecutive patients are operated with this technique (group I n=66; group il n=15). We recently performed 54 pulmonary wedge and bulla excision using videothoracoscopic techniques. Average age 30.5 years (range 15 to 67 years). Indications were pneumothorax in 54 patients, small peripheral solitary nodule in 1, diffuse pulmonary infiltrate in 1, neurinoms in 3, pleural malignancies in 2, pulmonary cyst in 1, pleural thickening in 1, mediastinaly masses in 2, pleural fibrom in 1, pleural metastases in 1, pulmonary metastases in 13. There were no operative death. Intraoperative complications were 8 intercostal vessels bleeding, one patient required blood transfusion. Average hospitalisation was 7.2 days. Patients undergoing videoassisted thoracic operations seem to have reduced postoperative pain, shorter hospitalisation, and quicker recovery times. This new modality appears to have beneficial value for patients, but further evaluation and prospective studies are indicated.