Thoracoscopic surgery and conventional open thoracotomy in metastatic lung cancer.

BACKGROUND

We performed a retrospective comparison of the oncological outcome of thoracoscopic surgery for pulmonary metastasis with that of conventional open thoracotomy.

METHODS

The patient population for our retrospective comparison was comprised of 45 patients undergoing pulmonary resections via video-assisted thoracoscopy (thoracoscopy group) and 55 undergoing similar resections by open thoracotomy (open group) for pulmonary metastases between 1994 and 1999.

RESULTS

Solitary metastasis was resected more frequently with thoracoscopy than open thoracotomy. There were no significant intergroup differences in rates of local recurrence from the initial pulmonary resection site. The actuarial 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year survival rates were, respectively, 82.8%, 70.0%, and 62.3% in the thoracoscopy group and 93.6%, 64.6%, and 52.7% in the open group. The rates of pulmonary recurrence and survival also did not differ significantly between the two groups with solitary metastases.

CONCLUSION

Thoracoscopic surgery for metastatic lung disease appears to be feasible as long as the preoperative metastatic tumor evaluation using chest computed tomography (CT) is accurate.