THORACOSCOPIC LOBECTOMY – TECHNICAL ASPECTS

Minimally invasive lung resection procedures are more and more used in current practice all over the world and stand for reduced postoperative morbidity and similar long term outcome. Technically speaking, there is a large variability of practice among surgeons but there are some certain things in which all agree. We present the surgical technique that we used for more than 400 thoracoscopic lobectomies in the last 5 years. Although no prospective, randomized series have compared thoracoscopic lobectomy with conventional approaches, a sufficient number of single-institution and multiinstitution series have been published to conclude that thoracoscopic lobectomy is a reasonable strategy for patients with clinical stage I lung cancer