KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The study aimed to assess the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of Lu’s novel LVATS approach for lung cancer resection.
- The results revealed that Lu’s approach for NSCLC lobectomy via video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery is safe, feasible, and efficient.
Lu’s approach for video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (LVATS), evolving from UVATS, represents an innovative surgical technique for VATS in lung cancer resection.
Baofeng Wang and the team aimed to investigate the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of this innovative surgical approach.
The study retrospectively collected and analyzed Clinical data from patients with non small cell lung cancer(NSCLC) undergoing curative thoracoscopic lobectomy between March 2021 and March 2022.
Patients were categorized into LVATS and UVATS groups based on whether Lu’s approach was applied during VATS. To mitigate selection bias, propensity score matching created two comparable groups at a 1:1 ratio using nearest-neighbor score matching. Perioperative variables, including operation time, intraoperative blood loss, lymph node dissection, drainage volume and duration, postoperative hospital stay, pain scores (VAS) on POD1 and POD3, and incidence of complications, were statistically compared with significance set at P<0.05.
About 182 patients with NSCLC were included, 86 underwent LVATS and 96 underwent UVATS after propensity score matching yielded 62 matched pairs. There were no perioperative deaths reported.
Compared to the UVATS group, patients in the LVATS group experienced significantly shorter operation times (median 88 minutes [IQR 75-106] vs. 122 minutes [97-144], P<0.001), lower intraoperative blood loss (20 ml [20-30] vs. 25 ml [20-50], P = 0.021), shorter incision lengths (2.50 cm [2.50-2.50] vs. 3.00 cm [3.00-3.50], P <0.001), and higher drainage volumes (460 ml [310-660] vs. 345 ml [225-600], P = 0.041).
No significant differences were observed between groups in the number of lymph node stations dissected (5 [4-5] vs. 5 [4-5], P = 0.436), drainage duration (3 days [3-4] vs. 3 days [3-4], P = 0.743), length of postoperative hospital stay (4 days [4-5] vs. 4 days [4-6], P= 0.608), pain scores on POD1 (4 [4-4] vs. 4 [4-4], P= 0.058) and POD3 (3 [3-4] vs. 4 [3-4], P = 0.219), or incidence of postoperative complications (P= 0.521).
The study concluded that Lu’s approach for video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery in NSCLC lobectomy is both safe and feasible. This method demonstrated effectiveness in reducing surgical time, minimizing incision length, and lowering intraoperative blood loss.
No funding was provided.
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38917144/
Wang B, Wang J, Sun T, et al. (2024). “Lu’s approach for video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery.” PLoS One. 2024 Jun 25;19(6):e0300632. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0300632. PMID: 38917144.