New skills take surgery to higher level

It may seem like science fiction when surgeons make three or four small incisions, each 1.5 cm long, on the chest wall of a patient to remove lung cancer tumors. But it routinely occurs at West China Hospital of Sichuan University in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.

The technique is called video assisted thoracoscopic surgery and was first performed by Robert McKenna, a surgeon at CedarsSinai Medical Center in the United States in 1992. It avoids extensive damage to the chest wall that occurs in a traditional thoracotomy, where an incision of 30 cmcan often result in traumatic injuries, complications and a longer recovery period.

Surgery is the main method of treatment for lung cancer, which claims 400,000 lives each year in China.