Journal of thoracic disease
-
Post-thoracotomy pain syndrome (PTPS) is difficult for thoracic surgeons to manage. PTPS should never arise after minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Uniportal video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (U-VATS), a form of MIS for thoracic disease, has become more common around the world and might reduce the risk of PTPS after thoracic surgery. We compared the frequencies of PTPS after U-VATS-based and multi-port VATS (M-VATS)-based lobectomy for lung cancer. ⋯ Compared with M-VATS, U-VATS exhibited a significantly lower incidence of PTPS.
-
Uniportal video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) is probably the most successful single-incision approach worldwide, probably secondary to several specific circumstances: multiportal VATS was hardly getting his recognition in the thoracic surgeon's community; the extraordinary effort by his creators and believers for developing the technique and giving massive diffusion; the subjective feeling by surgeons who performed the approach about its benefits and advantages. Despite this, many efforts have focused on extending new indications and describing variations of the original intercostal uniportal VATS, but few quality papers have analyzed the real impact of the approach and its real advantages or disadvantages comparing to multiportal VATS. ⋯ With the aim of standardizing the approach and the technical aspects for non-experienced or beginners, the Uniportal VATS Interest Group (UVIG) of the European Society of Thoracic Surgery (ESTS) decided to set the basis for homogenization of the technique to cement the development of high-level evidence works that shed light on the real outcomes of uniportal compared to multiportal VATS. This article describes the main specific technical aspects while performing lower lobectomies and lymphadenectomy, which were described as the most suitable cases for initiating the learning curve.