Abstract:

Introduction: Video-assisted toracoscopic surgery (VATS) has gained a widespread popularity throughout the world in the last decade as it provides proven healing in the patient's course. Recently, the only port of VATS, which appears to be a more minimal invasive approach compared to conventional VATS, has begun to be used for the majority of thyroid surgical pathologies within the chest emptiness. This retrospective one-centric study aims to share our experience in the surgery of mediastinal pathologies we perform with one-insection VATS. Instruments and Methods: Patients with a single injection for mediastinal pathologies between May 2009 and May 2019 were included in the study and medical files were retrospective. Results: 112 patients (female, 52.7%) aged between 3-87 years were included in the study. Operations performed with single incision VATS were for diagnostic (n=25) and therapeutic (n=87) purposes. No thoracotomy or additional incision was required in any of the operations. The mean operative time was 26 minutes for diagnostic procedures and 53 minutes for therapeutic procedures. The mean postoperative drainage time was 1.3 days and the postoperative hospital stay was 2.3 days. Postoperative complications developed in only 5 patients, no mortality was observed. No recurrence was observed in any of the patients during the follow-up period (1-25 months). Result: The use of this innovative technique, i.e. single injection VATS, for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes in mediastinal pathologies, reduces the need for more invasive procedures such as toracotomy or sternotomy and leads to better patient results such as early recovery and less pain.

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