NEWS

I see a number of patients with treated colorectal cancer, who unfortunately develop deposits in the lung. The main question is on the appropriateness and suitability of lung surgery to remove them. This is an article discussing the PulMiCC trial.

Surgeons around the world currently work with two principal surgical stapler design, where the anvil jaw (thin part) is either inline (e.g. Medtronic) or offset (e.g. Johnson and Johnson). This is a short article on tips for working with offset staplers.

MARS 2 is the world's only multicentre randomised clinical trial to evaluate the feasibility of recruiting into a trial of surgery for malignant pleural mesothelioma.
2016 has certainly been an exciting year for the trial as we achieved both feasibility endpoints which is the ability to randomise 25 patients in any 6 months or 50 patients within 24 months. As of the 5 December 2016 (during the World Conference of Lung Cancer) the 50th participant was randomised 5 months ahead of schedule allowing us to declare the trial "feasible"!

When we talk about robotic surgery, to the patient it conjures up futuristic images of a technologically sophisticated robot doing the operation instead of a (human) surgeon.
For lung cancer surgery, the reality is that a surgeon is either doing the operation using keyhole surgery directly, or through “remote control” using smaller and internal articulating “robotic” instruments and camera visualisation. I think there are a number of comparable similarities and differences. 

I read with astonishment on UK national data on the risk of death for chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer in the Lancet Oncology today.[1] I was practicing under the assumption that chemotherapy is the lower risk option presented to patients who were not comfortable with the risk of death from surgery. Having compared the outcomes of the two modalities of treatment I was certainly surprised if not shock

Technology continues to improve and as surgeon we move along with it, but it is often difficult to determine what is a meaningful improvement over what we currently do.

Many wonder why we should have a constant need to "innovate" and keep pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones and possibly to the detriment of clinical care? The answer is survival.

It was a delight to attend the 24th European Conference on General Thoracic Surgery in Naples 2016.