Video-assisted thoracic surgery is finding an ever-increasing role in the diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of thoracic disorders that previously required sternotomy or open thoracotomy. The potential advantages of video-assisted thoracic surgery include less postoperative pain, fewer operative complications, shortened hospital stay and reduced costs. The following review examines the sur...

background: postoperative breast abnormalities after breast conserving surgery or modified radical mastectomy are frequently overlooked and inaccurately assessed or reported using multidetector computed tomography (mdct). these inaccurate results may have legal ramifications for the clinicians, cause patients avoidable anxiety, and lead to additional unnecessary diagnostic follow-up testing and...

Although it is not a pathologically significant entity, cases of azygos lobe (AL) are interesting due to the difficulty of performing video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) procedures in the affected patients and the presence of a congenital malformation. Currently, videothoracoscopic surgery has advanced to such a level that most thoracic procedures can be performed with video assistance....

Major lung resections, particularly lobectomy, have advanced greatly, and are now regularly performed in thoracic surgery departments. These procedures have undergone particular scrutiny in inter-departmental benchmarking processes, and auditing can provide a good indication of the quality of the unit.1 There are, however, certain interventions that can be controversial in special circumstances...

Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is the standard surgical procedure for the treatment of advanced coronary artery disease. CABG surgery has been demonstrated to improve symptoms and, in specific subgroups of patients, to prolong life. Despite its success, the long-term outcome of coronary bypass surgery is strongly influenced by the fate of the vascular conduits used. Impressive long-term...

Extensive locoregional recurrency or metastatic involvement of brachial plexopathy is a condition that is often associated with advanced systemic breast cancer. In the past the role of surgeon was restricted due to a scepticism as to whether any benefit will be provided for the patient. In the recent 25 years however safe and refined plastic surgical approaches have been developed that provide ...

Department of Advanced Preventive Medicine for Infectious Disease, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, 980-8575 Japan; Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, 852-8523 Japan; Department of Thoracic Surgery, Department of Anesthesiology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, 980-8575 Japan; Department of Infection Control and Laboratory Diagnosti...

The treatment of descending thoracic aortic aneurysms using endovascular stents is one of the more recent advances in treatment and is receiving increasing attention as it is a less invasive alternative to open surgical repair. Although the technology is still primitive, significant improvements have lately been made in the design and deployment of the endovascular stent-grafts. Aortic stent-gr...