Invited commentary

Our plain-English summary of Invited commentary, by V.W. Rusch (The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, 2015).

The study

• Author: V.W. Rusch
• Journal: The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
• Published: 2015;99(5):1780
• Type of article: Comment
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This is a short invited commentary, not an original study. The author discussed a separate study by Burkholder and colleagues, published in the same journal, which followed patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma after an operation called extended pleurectomy/decortication and measured quality of life and lung function over time. As the author described it, roughly half of the 36 patients in that study had early-stage disease with minimal symptoms, and the other half had more locally advanced disease with symptoms from tumor encasing the lung. According to the commentary, the operation did not improve quality of life and decreased lung function in the patients without symptoms. The patients with symptoms had improved quality of life but no improvement in lung function. The author suggested this lack of lung function improvement may have been related to removal and patch repair of the diaphragm. The author stated that these were data from a small single-institution study needing confirmation in larger, preferably multicenter, trials. The author concluded that future trials should measure quality of life and lung function. Asbestos exposure was not discussed.

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: Invited commentary on another published study (Burkholder and colleagues, Ann Thorac Surg 2015;99:1775–80); not original research
• Who was studied: As described by the commentary: 36 patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma treated with extended pleurectomy/decortication at a single institution in the Burkholder study. Roughly half had early-stage disease with minimal symptoms and half had more locally advanced, symptomatic disease.
• Exposure: Asbestos exposure is not discussed. The commentary concerns a surgical treatment, extended pleurectomy/decortication, for malignant pleural mesothelioma.
• Main results:
  • As reported in the commentary about the Burkholder study: in the asymptomatic (early-stage) patients, extended pleurectomy/decortication did not improve quality of life and decreased pulmonary function
  • As reported in the commentary: the symptomatic patients had improved quality of life but no improvement in pulmonary function
  • The commentary's author suggested, as a possibility, that the lack of lung function improvement may have been related to resection and patch reconstruction of the hemidiaphragm
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the data require validation in larger, preferably multicenter, trials. The author also concluded that quality-of-life and pulmonary function endpoints should be included in surgical and multimodality mesothelioma trials.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The commentary's author notes that the study discussed was small and from a single institution

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Lung cancer, Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Invited commentary — R.M. Flores (2014)
• Invited commentary — B.C. Tong (2014)
• Invited commentary — L. Lang-Lazdunski (2015)
• Invited commentary — C.P. Clarke (2011)
• Invited commentary — D. Rice (2010)
• Clinical impact of extrapleural pneumonectomy for malignant pleural mesothelioma — V. Ambrogi, A. Baldi, et al. (2012)

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