Thoracic Surgery
Cardiothoracic surgery is the field of medicine involved in surgical treatment of diseases affecting organs inside the thorax (the chest)—generally treatment of conditions of the heart (heart disease) and lungs (lung disease). Cardiac surgery (involving the heart and great vessels) and thoracic surgery (involving the lungs) are sometimes treated as separate surgical specialties, but this is not generally the case in the UK or the USA.
The most common problems dealt with in Thoracic Surgery are:
• Lung cancer
• Cancer of the lining around the lung (mesothelioma)
• Cancer from elsewhere in the body (lung metastases)
• Lung collapse due to air (pneumothorax), fluid (pleural effusion) or infection (empyema).
Patients may have experienced shortness of breath, a persistent cough, coughing up blood, chest pain, fevers, a chest infection or weight loss. Their symptoms are usually investigated with a chest x-ray or CT scan of the chest. The most common operations performed by many hospitals in the UK are video-assisted thoracoscopy (VATS), which is a form of keyhole surgery, and removal of part (or all) of the lung. Other common operations include the diagnosis and treatment of other chest pathologies such as mediastinal tumours, cysts or infections.
The treatment of lung metastases can be carried out either by the more traditional method of stapling, or by new laser techniques (either open or VATS) utilising the LIMAX 120W Diode-pumped Nd:YAG Laser at 1.318um. This wavelength offers the ideal combination of resection, coagulation and sealing in lung parenchyma, and the use of a laser instead of multiple staples preserves a maximum amount of lung tissue and improves a patient's quality of life.
