General thoracic surgery

Our plain-English summary of General thoracic surgery, by L.P. Faber (Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 1998).

The study

• Author: L.P. Faber
• Journal: Journal of the American College of Surgeons
• Published: 1998;186(2):162-72
• Type of article: Review
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This article was a review by a single author of recently published work in general thoracic surgery. It was not a new study. It covered lung cancer, malignant mesothelioma, lung volume reduction surgery, video-assisted thoracic surgery, lung metastases, lung transplantation and the esophagus. The article did not mention asbestos. In the mesothelioma section, the author described a new international staging system for malignant pleural mesothelioma presented by the International Mesothelioma Interest Group. The author also summarized a report by Sugarbaker and colleagues on 120 patients treated with extrapleural pneumonectomy followed by chemotherapy (carboplatin and paclitaxel) and radiotherapy. In that report the mortality rate was 5%, survival was 45% at 2 years and 22% at 5 years, and median survival was 21 months. Patients with epithelial histology and negative lymph nodes had 2- and 5-year survival rates of 74% and 39%. Sarcomatous histology was associated with a poor prognosis. The author wrote that prognosis appeared best for epithelial histology and localized disease without lymph node involvement. The author described gene therapy research by Smythe and associates, including experimental work in rodents and subhuman primates, and noted that further reports were awaited.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: narrative review of recent published literature (a "What's New" overview), not an original study
• Who was studied: No study population of its own. The author reviewed published reports across general thoracic surgery: lung cancer, mesothelioma, lung volume reduction surgery, video-assisted thoracic surgery, lung metastases, lung transplantation and esophageal disease.
• Main results:
  • The review reported that the International Mesothelioma Interest Group had presented a new international staging system for malignant pleural mesothelioma.
  • In the reviewed report by Sugarbaker and colleagues, 120 patients underwent extrapleural pneumonectomy followed by adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and the mortality rate was 5%.
  • In that same report of 120 patients, survival was 45% at 2 years and 22% at 5 years, with a median survival of 21 months.
  • In the Sugarbaker report, patients with epithelial histology and negative lymph nodes had 2- and 5-year survival rates of 74% and 39%.
  • In the Sugarbaker report, sarcomatous histology was associated with a poor prognosis.
  • The review described gene therapy research by Smythe and associates, involving adenovirus given into the pleural space, with experimental work in rodents and subhuman primates.
• The authors' conclusion: On mesothelioma, the author concluded that prognosis appeared best for patients with epithelial histology and localized disease without lymph node involvement.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author noted that further reports on mesothelioma gene therapy were still awaited.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Thoracic Surgery.

Related studies

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• A survey of opinions and beliefs concerning surgery for malignant pleural mesothelioma amongst 802 members of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS), the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons (ESTS) and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) — T. Treasure, E. Internullo, et al. (2011)
• The role of thoracic surgery in the management of mesothelioma: an expert opinion on the limited evidence — P. Bertoglio, D.A. Waller (2016)
• The Thoracic Surgery Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center — V.W. Rusch (2015)
• Types of surgery post-neoadjuvant chemotherapy for pleural mesothelioma — K. Kuribayashi, H. Doi, et al. (2019)
• How does the timing of chemotherapy affect outcome following radical surgery for malignant pleural mesothelioma? — A.J. Sharkey, K.J. O'Byrne, et al. (2016)

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