Background: There are few reports of single-port video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (S-VATS) anatomic segmentectomy and S-VATS lobectomy for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and no comparisons between them have yet been reported. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the safety and efficacy of S-VATS anatomic segmentectomy and S-VATS lobectomy for early-stage NSCLC.Methods: In this retrospective observational study, the outcomes of 79 consecutive patients who had undergone S-VATS anatomic segmentectomy (32 patients) or S-VATS lobectomy (47 patients) for earlystage NSCLC from April 2014 to June 2015 were examined. The operation time, intraoperative blood loss, numbers of dissected lymph nodes and mediastinal nodal stations, numbers of staples used, postoperative drainage volume and duration, duration of hospital stay, costs, postoperative complications, local recurrence, and survival were compared between these two groups.Results: The postoperative drainage volume was smaller and the postoperative drainage duration shorter in the S-VATS segmentectomy than the lobectomy group (P<0.05). There were no significant differences in operation time, intraoperative blood loss, number of staples used, number and stations of dissected mediastinal lymph nodes, duration of hospital stay, costs, or postoperative complications. At the time of writing, no deaths or local recurrences had occurred in either group.Conclusions: S-VATS segmentectomy is as safe and effective as S-VATS lobectomy. Patients who undergo S-VATS segmentectomy seem to recover faster. in local tumor recurrence rate and total 5-year survival rate between these two surgical options (5-7). Anatomic segmentectomy is clearly the less invasive. The Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Clinical Practice Guidelines issued by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network in 2010 recommend anatomic segmentectomy as a suitable operative procedure for treating early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (8). The size and number of operative incisions can be used as an index of the severity of operative wounds (9,10). In accordance with the above data, surgeons have gradually begun to attempt single-port video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (S-VATS), which is less invasive than previously performed procedures. Although Gonzalez et al. have reported outcomes of S-VATS lobectomy (11) and anatomic segmentectomy (12) and Zhu et al. have reported the comparison of the feasibility and safety between singleport and triple-port complete thoracoscopic lobectomy for NSCLC (13), there are few reports comparing S-VATS anatomic segmentectomy and lobectomy for early stage NSCLC.In this study we retrospectively analyzed data on 32 patients who had undergone S-VATS anatomic segmentectomy and 47 patients who had undergone S-VATS lobectomy for early stage NSCLC in our institution and explored the safety, efficacy, advantages, and disadvantages of these two operative procedures.
MethodsIn this study, data for 79 patients who had undergone S-VATS procedures [32 anatomic segment...