Lung cancer, as one of the malignant tumors with the fastest increasing morbidity and mortality in the world, has a serious impact on people's health. With the continuous advancement of medical technology, more and more medical methods are applied to lung cancer screening, which has gradually increased the detection rate of early lung cancer. At present, the standard operation for the treatment of early non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is still lobectomy and mediastinal lymph node dissection. There is a growing trend to use segmentectomy for the treatment of early stage lung cancer. Anatomical segmentectomy not only removes the lesions to the maximum extent, but also preserves the lung function to the greatest extent, and its advantages are also obvious. This article reviews the progress of anatomical segmentectomy in the treatment of early NSCLC.
ObjectiveTo systematically evaluate the short-term efficacy and safety of lung subsegmentectomy and segmentectomy in the treatment of small pulmonary nodules. MethodsComputer searches were conducted on PubMed, The Cochrane Library, EMbase, Scopus, Web of Science, SinoMed, Wanfang Data, VIP, and CNKI databases to collect relevant literature on the short-term efficacy and safety of lung subsegmentectomy and segmentectomy for small pulmonary nodules from the inception to April 2024. Two researchers independently screened the literature and extracted data according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.4 software, and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) was used to assess the quality of the selected literature. ResultsA total of 15 retrospective cohort studies with 2417 patients were included, among whom 796 patients underwent lung subsegmentectomy and 1621patients underwent segmentectomy. The NOS scores of the included literature were all≥6 points. Meta-analysis results showed that compared with segmentectomy, lung subsegmentectomy had a lower overall postoperative complication rate [OR=0.54, 95%CI (0.39, 0.75), P<0.01] and fewer lymph nodes dissected [MD=−0.43, 95%CI (−0.81, −0.06), P=0.02]. There was no statistical difference between the two surgical methods in terms of operation time [MD=5.11, 95%CI (−4.02, 14.23), P=0.27], intraoperative blood loss [MD=−14.62, 95%CI (−29.58, 0.34), P=0.06], postoperative hospital stay [MD=−0.24, 95%CI (−0.49, 0.01), P=0.06], postoperative drainage time [MD=−0.14, 95%CI (−0.46, 0.18), P=0.40], intraoperative margin width [MD=0.10, 95%CI (−0.16, 0.35), P=0.46], or recurrence rate [OR=1.57, 95%CI (0.53, 4.61), P=0.42]. Subgroup analysis results showed that when using uniportal video-assisted thoracoscopy for surgery, compared with segmentectomy, lung subsegmentectomy had less intraoperative blood loss [MD=−15.57, 95%CI (−28.84, −2.30), P=0.02], shorter postoperative hospital stay [MD=−0.49, 95%CI (−0.63, −0.35), P<0.01], shorter postoperative drainage time [MD=−0.19, 95%CI (−0.35, −0.03), P=0.02], and lower overall complication rate [OR=0.55, 95%CI (0.31, 0.98), P=0.04]. ConclusionLung subsegmentectomy can achieve similar efficacy as segmentectomy and has a lower overall postoperative complication rate. In terms of safety, lung subsegmentectomy can achieve a margin range close to that of segmentectomy. When performing uniportal thoracoscopic surgery, lung subsegmentectomy has advantages over segmentectomy in terms of intraoperative blood loss, postoperative hospital stay, and drainage time.