BACKGROUND Thoracic surgery may cause reduced respiratory function and pulmonary complications, with associated increased risk of mortality. Postoperative physiotherapy aims to reverse atelectasis and secretion retention, and may include incentive spirometry. OBJECTIVES To review the evidence for incentive spirometry, examining the physiological basis, equipment and its use following thoracic...

Surgical pneumothorax allows obtaining comfortable surgical space for minimally invasive thoracic surgery, under spontaneous ventilation and thoracic epidural anesthesia, without need to provide general anesthesia and neuromuscular blockade. One lung ventilation (OLV) by iatrogenic lung collapse, associated with spontaneous breathing and lateral position required for the surgery, involves patho...

BACKGROUND The advances in surgical techniques, resuscitation and anesthesiology support over the last years have allowed simultaneous thoracic and abdominal operations to be made for cancer and concomitant severe heart vessel disease relieving the patient from several diseases simultaneously and achieving long lasting remission or cure. CLINICAL CASE A simultaneous nephrectomy and coronary a...

Video assisted thoracic surgery in advanced stage postpneumonic empyema aims for thorough debridement and washout of the pleural space followed by an attempt to release the entrapped lung (decortication). When the latter isn’t successful, and the patient is in a poor performance status, applying tube thoracostomy is the usual routine, to avoid conversion to thoracotomy and open decortication. T...

This study is to evaluate the prognostic significance of supraclavicular and/or celiac lymph node (LN) metastases in locally advanced thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NACRT) and surgery. Among the total 199 patients, 75 (37.7%) had supraclavicular and/or celiac LN metastasis. Surgery was performed following NACRT in 168 pati...

Background: The thoracic surgery team at the Shanghai Chest Hospital has been publishing its annual report since 2018, summarizing services provided and major progress achieved over previous year.

Objectives- To provide a reference anatomy of the thoracic cavity vessels of the Rayini goat by using Computed tomography. Design- Experimented study. Animals- Five healthy Rayini goat. Procedures- Spiral CT images (with and without contrast media) were acquired from the thoracic region perpendicular to long axis of the body. CT windows were adjusted as necessary to have optimized images of ...