WCLC 2018: Video-Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery vs. Thoracotomy for Early-Stage Disease
Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery appears to produce similar outcomes when compared with thoracotomy in patients with early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Dongrong Situ, MD, of the Lung Cancer Research Institute, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China, and colleagues found that patients undergoing the open operation and the less-invasive video-assisted procedure had comparable rates of recurrence and survival. Their findings were presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) in Toronto (Abstract OA06.02).
Patients with clinically early-stage NSCLC were enrolled in the noninferiority phase III trial at one of five thoracic surgical centers in China. A total of 508 participants were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to undergo video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery or thoracotomy. The standard surgical intervention included radical lobectomy plus hilar and mediastinal lymph node dissection.
The final analysis included 433 patients: 222 cases in the video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery group and 211 cases in the thoracotomy group. At 3 years, the locoregional recurrence rates were 4.5% and 5.7%, respectively (P = .664). Disease-free survival rates were also comparable between the video-assisted procedure and open surgery, at 66% versus 69%, respectively (P = .925). The 3-year overall survival rates were not significantly different between video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery and thoracotomy (74% vs. 73%).
