OBJECTIVE. Despite the increasingly use of video-assisted approaches in thoracic surgery, intraoperative conversion from minimally invasive to «open» takes place quite often, especially during anatomical lung resection. METHODS AND MATERIALS. A retrospective analysis of 106 consecutive anatomical lung resections (lobectomies) initiated by thoracoscopic access was performed. The patients were divided into two groups: a group of 90 patients

The OBJECTIVE was to identify prognostic factors of long-term air leak after lobectomies based on the analysis of the main preoperative and surgical clinical and functional indicators.METHODS AND MATERIALS. A retrospective study included 71 patients who underwent lung resection in the volume of lobectomy for lung cancer. The patients were divided into three groups - group 1 (n=42, 59 %) - air leak through the drains stopped within a day after surgery; group 2 (n=10, 14 %) - the duration of air leak from the pleural cavity from 1 to 5 days; group 3 (n=19, 27 %) the duration of air leak more than 5 days after surgery.RESULTS. The average values of the main clinical, surgical and functional indicators, such as the frequency of concomitant COPD, the severity of its course, smoking status, access (thoracotomy / thoracoscopy) in the three groups were almost the same. The difference in the average value of DLCO was characterized by the greatest tendency to reliability: the longer the pulmonary air leak was, the lower the values of this indicator turned out to be. Correlation analysis revealed a noticeable feedback between the long-term pulmonary air leak and the preoperative level of FEV1 (r=-0.59), a direct relationship between the level of FEV1 and DLCO (r=0.51), as well as a noticeable feedback between the long-term pulmonary air leak and the level of DLCO (r=-0.61) and a direct moderate relationship between the pulmonary air leak and the time spent on the stair climbing test (r=0.38).CONCLUSIONS. The combination of a low level of FEV1, a low level of DLCO and a long duration of the stair climbing test makes it possible to assess the risk of prolonged pulmonary air leak as significant and take this into account during the surgical intervention.