Minimally Invasive Lung Surgery Improves Chemotherapy Outcome

Researchers at the Duke University Medical Center (Durham, NC, USA)
studied the outcomes, including delays or reductions in chemotherapy delivery, for 100 patients treated at Duke with either minimally invasive thoracoscopic surgery or traditional surgery. Eighteen percent of the patients who had the minimally invasive surgery experienced delayed chemotherapy, compared with 58% of the patients who had the traditional surgery. In all, 26% of the thoracoscopic group experienced a reduction in the dosage of their planned chemotherapy regimen, compared to 49% of patients who underwent the open-chest surgery. The study was published in the April 2007 issue of the journal Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

"Patients who had the minimally invasive operation were less likely to experience delays in receiving chemotherapy or a reduction in the amount of chemotherapy we were able to give,” said Thomas D'Amico, M.D., a lung surgeon, and senior investigator on the study. "Chemotherapy after surgery has been shown to improve survival in lung cancer patients, so the more effectively we deliver that chemotherapy, the better.”

Thoracoscopic lobectomy has been used as an alternative to open surgery to remove lung tumors--called thoracotomy--for approximately 15 years; it can be an option for patients with non-small cell lung cancer, which is the most common type of lung cancer, making up 85% of all cases. The technique is most successful in patients whose tumors are less than 6 cm in size.


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