The role of thoracoscopy in the management of patients with chest injuries is constantly being redefined as more reports on its use continue to emerge in the literature. As of today video-thoracoscopy has been used mainly as a diagnostic tool for certain occult injuries, such as of the diaphragm, as well as a minimally invasive management option in specific therapeutic situations including earl...

"Medical" thoracoscopy as compared with "surgical" thoracoscopy (which is more precisely known as video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS)) has the advantage that it can be performed under local anaesthesia or conscious sedation, in an endoscopy suite, using nondisposible rigid instruments. Thus, it is considerably less invasive and less expensive. The main diagnostic and therapeutic indications ...

Bronchogenic cysts are rare congenital malformation that need surgical removal. To date, bronchogenic cysts located in highest upper mediastinum excised by thoracoscopy have not been reported, though complete thoracoscopic extirpation of a bronchogenic cyst has been reported before. We excised two highest upper bronchogenic cysts by thoracoscopy successfully without any postoperative complicati...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To assess the relative benefit of thoracoscopy vs open thoracotomy in the removal of benign neurogenic, mediastinal tumors (BNMTs). DESIGN Retrospective comparative study of thoracoscopy and open thoracotomy. SETTING Patients underwent surgery at the thoracic surgical services of two institutions from 1988 to 1994. Patients who underwent thoracoscopy were operated on more re...

OBJECTIVES Notwithstanding preoperative staging, a number of procedures still end in an exploratory thoracotomy as a result of unexpected findings. The aim of this work is to evaluate the validity of routine videothoracoscopy, performed as the first step of every planned resection for non-small cell lung cancer, to assess tumor resectability and feasibility of the resection through thoracoscopy...

INTRODUCTION In cases of empyema, some form of intervention, either chest tube drainage, thoracoscopy, video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS), or thoracotomy, with or without pleural fibrinolysis, is required. What the best approach is and when and how to intervene is a matter of debate. STUDY OBJECTIVE To analyze the safety and outcome of medical thoracoscopy in the treatment of multiloculat...

BACKGROUND Thoracoscopic pleural biopsy increases the diagnostic yield of pleural effusions undiagnosed after thoracentesis and is superior to closed pleural biopsy. Medical thoracoscopy can be performed using the rigid thoracoscope or the semirigid thoracoscope (pleuroscope). In this randomized trial, we compare the efficacy and safety of the 2 thoracoscopes. METHODS Subjects with undiagnose...

BACKGROUND Medical thoracoscopy has received interest in recent past for diagnostic as well as therapeutic uses. In this study we describe our experience with diagnostic medical thoracoscopy in pleural effusions of undiagnosed etiology. OBJECTIVE 1.To detect diagnostic yield of medical thoracoscopy in pleural effusions of unknown etiology. 2.To find complication rate in these patients. METH...