Invited Commentary

Our plain-English summary of Invited Commentary, by B.M. Burt (The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, 2015).

The study

• Author: B.M. Burt
• Journal: The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
• Published: 2015;100(5):1874
• Type of article: Comment
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This was a one-page invited commentary, not an original study. It discussed a separate study by Williams and colleagues in the same journal that looked back at 117 patients who had extended pleurectomy and decortication for epithelial and biphasic pleural mesothelioma. This operation completely removes both layers of the pleura, the lining around the lungs, and resects and reconstructs the diaphragm and pericardium when tumor involves them. As the commentary described that study, 54 patients were 70 or older and 63 were younger than 70. The older group did not have significantly higher rates of operative mortality (3.7% versus 3.2%), major complications (5.6% versus 11.1%) or minor complications (31.5% versus 28.6%). Overall survival did not differ statistically by age. In univariate analyses, better performance status was associated with better overall survival. The author noted that the results may not apply widely because all operations were done at one center by one surgeon. The author concluded that age alone should not decide fitness for surgery. In the author's view, measures of general well-being and activity should stay central to surgical decisions.

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 a separately published retrospective single-center study (Williams et al., Ann Thorac Surg 2015;100:1868–74)
• Who was studied: As described in the commentary, the Williams et al. study included 117 patients with epithelial or biphasic pleural mesothelioma who had extended pleurectomy and decortication at a single center by a single surgeon. 54 were aged 70 or older (range 70 to 88) and 63 were younger than 70 (range 43 to 69.9).
• Exposure: Age 70 years and older, compared with younger age, in patients having extended pleurectomy and decortication. Asbestos exposure is not discussed.
• Main results:
  • As reported in the commentary, the older group (70 and over) had no significantly greater rates of operative mortality, major complications or minor complications (3.7%, 5.6%, 31.5%) than the younger group (3.2%, 11.1%, 28.6%).
  • Long-term survival analyses showed no statistical difference in overall survival by age.
  • In univariate analyses, better performance status was associated with more favorable overall survival.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that age alone should not be used to determine fitness for surgery, and that measures of general well-being and activity should remain in the foreground of preoperative decisions.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author stated that the generalizability of the Williams et al. results is limited because the study came from a single institution and all cases were performed by a single surgeon.

Topics

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

Related studies

• Invited commentary — L. Lang-Lazdunski (2015)
• Invited commentary — H.I. Pass (2012)
• Invited commentary — C.P. Clarke (2011)
• Invited commentary: Is it possible to investigate the quantitative relation between asbestos and mesothelioma in a community-based study? — J. Siemiatycki, P. Boffetta (1998)
• Invited commentary — R.M. Flores (2014)
• Invited commentary — B.C. Tong (2014)

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