Lobectomía por VATS

introduction: in the past two decades the advances in minimally invasive surgery have revolutionized surgical practices in all subspecialties. in pulmonary resections lobectomy by assisted video-thoracoscopy (vats) has demonstrated to have less perioperative complications, less inflammatory response and similar oncological results in comparison with lobectomy by thoracotomy. methods and patients: we present a retrospective study of 30 patients subjected to lobectomy by vats. diagnoses, complications intra and post-surgery, bleeding, conversion to thoracotomy, operatory time, lymphoadenectomy, pleurostomy and hospitalization time, were the variables analyzed. results: 90% of the 30 patients (n = 27) had an oncological diagnosis, the remainder patients had benign lesions (n = 3), all of them presented bronchiectasis. tnm staging showed equal distribution for stages i and ii. we obtained on average 13 nodes by lymphoadenoectomy (range: 9 to 18 nodes). operatory time was 124 min on average. with respect to complications 50% of them (n = 3) bleed more than 1,000 ml. the conversion rate in our series was 16.5% (n = 5). pleurostomy lasted 4.09 days on average (range: 2 to 9 days). there was no mortality in our series. conclusion: in our series, lobectomy by vats had equal range of intra and post- surgery complications as compared to toracotomy. we believe that our study demonstrates a benefit in the recovery time of our patients.