Evolution of minimally invasive thoracic surgery

Abstract

In the realm of surgery, the pursuit of less trauma is an undying desire shared by both surgeons and patients alike. In the early 1990s, the development of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) had pushed the envelope of thoracic surgery further into a new era of minimally invasive thoracic surgery (MITS). In 2004, Rocco reported the first case of uniportal VATS pulmonary wedge resection (1). In 2011, Dr. Diego Gonzalez-Rivas from Spain further developed the technique and successfully applied it in lobectomy and systemic lymphadenectomy (2,3). As of today, uniportal VATS is able to complete almost as many tasks as other MITS approaches, including bronchial sleeve resection, angioplasty, carinal resection and reconstruction as well as tracheal surgery