Major morbidity after video-assisted thoracic surgery lung resections: a comparison between the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons definition and the Thoracic Morbidity and Mortality system.

Background: The thoracic morbidity and mortality (TM&M) classification system univocally encodes the postoperative adverse events by their management complexity. This study aims to compare the distribution of the severity of complications according to the TM&M system versus the distribution according to the classification proposed by European Society of Thoracic Surgeons (ESTS) Database in a population of patients submitted to video assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) lung resection.

Methods: A total of 227 consecutive patients submitted to VATS lobectomy for lung cancer were analyzed.