Diagnosis and Treatment of Mediastinal Tumors by Thoracoscopy

Unilateral thoracoscopic subtotal thymectomy for the treatment of stage I and II thymoma

“…Most authors restrict the indication of thoracoscopic surgery to lesions smaller than those in our series [22]. From the viewpoint of resectability, however, invasion to surrounding tissues, especially to the left brachiocephalic vein, is more important than the size of the tumour [4,9].…”

“…From its beginning in the 1990s, thoracoscopic surgery was predicted by many surgeons to become the procedure of choice not only for benign tumours of the mediastinum but also for non-invasive thymomas [7][8][9]. Thoracoscopic surgery for thymic disease has also been reported to be successful.…”

Alternative choices of total and partial thymectomy in video-assisted resection of noninvasive thymomas

“…Quite a few authors have speculated that VATS would become the procedure of choice not only for benign mediastinal tumors but also for noninvasive thymomas [2][3][4][6][7][8]. However, we found only a few major series that had previously reviewed the surgical results of videoassisted thymectomy for thymoma [10,11].…”

“…Recent advances in both the instruments and techniques used in VATS have enabled surgeons to establish a variety of minimally invasive procedures to remove completely anterior mediastinal masses and/or abnormal thymus causing myasthenia gravis (MG) [4][5][6][7]. Based on this, VATS has recently been applied to the extirpation of noninvasive thymomas with increasing frequency despite concern about their malignant potential [8][9][10][11].…”

Thymic minimally invasive surgery: state of the art across the world: Central-South America

“…In Brazil, the first case series including 488 cases from four centers was published in 1994, and in that series, 35 patients had mediastinal procedures, mostly pericardial windows (5). In the early 2000s, more detailed case series were published by Brazilian surgeons reporting the use of VATS, one focusing in talc poudrage for pleurodesis (611 cases) and the other one in mediastinal lesions (73 patients) (6,7). In the following years, other surgeons from Brazil (8), but also from Argentina (9) and Cuba (10), reported their growing experience with low-complexity mediastinal VATS procedures.…”