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Videoassisted Thoracoscopic Surgery Lobectomy: a Series of Consecutive 300 Patients and a 3year Follow-up

Abstract: Objective To summarize the clinical experiences of videoassisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) lobectomy performed on a series of 300 consecutive patients, and report the results of a 3year followup. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of 300 consecutive patients who underwent VATS lobectomy from September 2006 to December 2009 in the Department of Thoracic Surgery, People’s Hospital of Peking University. Of the 300 patients, there were 159 males and 141 females with the age ranged from 18 to 86 years (58.30±13.90 years). Preoperative diagnosis showed that there were 266 patients of mass in the lung, 22 of bronchiectasis, 5 of cyst/abscess in the lung, 3 of pulmonary sequestration, 2 of fungus infection, and 2 of pneumothorax. We assessed the perioperative variables by standard descriptive statistics and estimated the 3year survival rate by KaplanMeier analyses. Results Sixtysix patients were diagnosed to have benign diseases and 234 patients were with malignancies. A percentage of 81.82% (54/66) of the benign patients had infectious diseases, and the majority of the malignancies was nonsmall cell lung cancer (213 patients), especially adenocarcinomas which comprised 73.08% (171/234) of all the malignancies. A total of 273 patients accomplished VATS lobectomy, of whom 27 patients required conversion to thoracotomy at a conversion rate of 9.00%(27/300). In the VATS lobectomy accomplished group, the mean operation time was 317±088 h, and the blood loss was 225.70±195.20 ml. Benign surgery took significantly less time (t=2.280, P=0.0032) and had shorter drainage time(t=1.392, P=0.0304) than those of malignancies. Dense adhesions between lymph nodes and blood vessels was the primary reason for conversion to thoracotomy in 17 patients at a percentage of 62.96%(17/27). Bleeding was the second reason for conversion in 5 patients at a percentage of 1852%. The patients in the upper lobe lobectomy group showed significantly higher risk of conversion compared with those in the nonupper lobe surgery group (χ2=6.131, P=0.013), while gender (χ2=1.182, P=0.277), pathology (χ2=0.210, P=0.647) and the tumor located in left or right side(χ2=2.933, P=0.087) didn’t influence the risk of conversion. The result of the 3year followup showed that there was no reoccurrence of symptoms in patients with benign diseases; Nonsmall cell lung cancer patients had a 3year survival rate of 0.87 with the 95% confidence interval (CI) from 0.77 to 0.96, and pathologic stage I patients at 0.91 with the 95%CI from 0.85 to 0.98. Conclusion VATS lobectomy is safe and effective. This research shows that domestic technologies of VATS lobectomy and its midterm results have reached the international standard.