[The common causes of conversion of VATS during operation for 248 non-small cell lung cancers].

Background And Objective: VATS-lobectomy has been used as regular surgical procedure clinically for non-small cell lung cancer. The aim of this study is to evaluate the surgical emergencies during VATS and the related factors postoperatively.

Methods: Clinical data were reviewed for patients who were performed with pulmonary related surgery between January 2006 and July 2008 in our department.

Results: 248 (117 CVATS and 131 AVATS) VATS lobectomy were performed, including 13 cases that were transferred into AVATS or OPEN. The common related reasons were bleeding of pulmonary branches, adhesion, anatomic deformity, bleeding of azygos and bleeding of middle-lobe-vein. 129 thoracotomy cases were enrolled. Compared with OPEN surgery, VATS got the merits of short in-hospital duration (20 days vs 27 days, P=0.015), less bleeding (197 mL vs 250 mL, P=0.005) and less pain (4.6 vs 6.2, P=0.003).

Conclusion: VATS is a safe surgical procedure for early stage NSCLC with merits of lower morbidity and sooner recovery. So it could be concluded that in some circumstances, VATS could be chosen as an alternate of thoractomy.