VATS Lobectomy is Better than Open Thoracotomy: What is the Evidence for Short-Term Outcomes?

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, with more than 200,000 new cases each year and 160,000 deaths. Surgical resection with an anatomic resection (typically a lobectomy) remains standard care for patients who have stage I and stage II non-small cell lung cancer. In the past 15 years, video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) has been used with increasing frequency worldwide to perform anatomic resections for lung cancer. This article reviews the current VATS lobectomy series and studies published since 2000 that compare VATS to open lobectomy.