Reflection on the Biological Significance of Minimally Invasive Surgery for Lung Cancer

Minimal invasive surgery with short operation time and enhanced recovery after surgery can truly achieve biological minimal invasiveness. The minimal invasive lung cancer surgery includes several kinds, such as uni-portal video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) and multi-portal VATS. Robotic-assisted thoracic surgery (RATS) can be categorized into multi-portal VATS. As a frontier technology of minimal invasive surgical technique, surgical robotic system has been broadly applied in many areas. The average RATS operation time is (91.51±30.80) min among our team, which is much shorter than reported uni-portal VATS operation time. For now, RATS has some drawbacks and is lacking of national practice guidelines, which, we believe, will be solved by technology development and large-scale randomized controlled trials.