To accompany our recent article on minimally invasive lung surgery for Winship magazine, please find a video featuring thoracic surgeon Manu Sancheti, MD.

As Sancheti explains, an advantage of minimally invasive approaches (sometimes called VATS for video-assisted thoracic surgery) is that surgeons do not open the patient’s chest, avoiding pain and potential complications and reducing length of stay in the hospital.

Among thoracic surgeons, the shift to this type of approach has taken place in the last few years — unevenly. Here’s a graph from one recent publication from Felix Fernandez, MD and colleagues, showing the percent of stage I lung cancer surgeries — compiled for individual surgeons in the Society of Thoracic Surgeons  — that are minimally invasive from 2011-2014. The average is about 63 percent, but it varies widely.

Attention medical journalists: if you want to ask questions like “Are these minimally invasive lung surgery approaches really good for long term patient outcomes?”, Fernandez is your guy. As the numbers come in, he is leading a team that is analyzing them. Read more