Background: This study aims to report the difficulties and complications we experienced in video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomies performed at our thoracic surgery center.

Methods: A total of 76 patients (54 males, 22 females; mean age 48.3 years; range 9 to 83 years) who underwent video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy between January 2012 and June 2016 were retrospectively reviewed. Preoperative patient characteristics such as additional diseases or tuberculosis history, stage for malignant diseases, surgical characteristics such as port properties and amount of bleeding, postoperative characteristics such as amount, time and duration of drainage, air leakage, and discharge time, morbidity and mortality rates, and their causes were evaluated.

Results: Of the patients, 35 were evaluated due to benign pulmonary diseases and 41 due to malignant pulmonary diseases. Postoperative prolonged air leakage developed in 14 patients. Of these patients, one was administered thoracotomy and primary repair, three were administered pleurodesis, and three were administered secondary pleurocan catheter, while the air leakage ended spontaneously in seven patients. Due to bleeding, one patient was treated with revision video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery on the same day postoperatively. One patient developed chylothorax and one patient developed pneumonia, which caused respiratory failure.

Conclusion: Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy is a safe thoracic procedure, which is used for both oncologic and non-oncologic diseases of the lung. Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery may be performed by all thoracic surgeons experienced in open thoracic surgery. Thanks to the gained experiences, the rates of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy may improve in all centers.

Keywords : Complications; first cases; video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy