The hospital stay after your surgery will be 1–4 days. If you have chest tubes, you won’t go home until they’re removed.

Is thoracotomy a major surgery?

A thoracotomy is when a surgeon goes between your ribs to get to your heart, lungs, or esophagus to diagnose or treat an illness. It’s a major operation, and doctors usually don’t use it if something simpler will work just as well.

How is a thoracoscopy performed?

Thoracoscopy is a procedure a doctor uses to look at the space inside the chest (outside of the lungs). This is done with a thoracoscope, a thin, flexible tube with a light and a small video camera on the end. The tube is put in through a small cut made near the lower end of the shoulder blade between the ribs.

How serious is a thoracotomy?

Immediate risks from the surgery include infection, bleeding, persistent air leakage from your lung and pain. Pain is the most commonly encountered complication of this procedure, and pain along the ribs and site of incision will most likely subside over days to weeks.

What are the complications of thoracotomy?

Possible risks from thoracotomy include:

• infection.
• bleeding.
• air leaking from your lungs.
• pneumonia.
• blood clot in your leg (deep vein thrombosis) that can travel to a lung and cause a blockage (pulmonary embolism)

What is thoracoscopy used for?

Thoracoscopy is a minimally invasive procedure traditionally performed to diagnose and/or treat pleural lung disease.

Who should perform thoracoscopy?

Thoracoscopy, preferably video assisted, is traditionally performed by surgeons with the patient under general anesthesia. This is increasingly replaced by thoracoscopy performed under conscious sedation by physicians.

What is average thoracotomy recovery time?

The thoracotomy wound should heal within 2 months, and the pain will gradually decrease over this time. In some cases, nerves become damaged during surgery. This may cause ongoing pain and is called post-thoracotomy pain syndrome.

What does a thoracic surgeon do?

Cardiothoracic surgeons operate on diseases that occur in the organs inside the chest and in the bony structures and tissues that form the chest cavity. Coronary artery disease is one of the most common diseases treated by cardiothoracic surgeons. General thoracic surgeons treat primarily lung cancer and diseases of the esophagus and chest wall.

Is thoracic surgery used for lung cancer?

Thoracic surgery, also known as chest surgery, may be used to diagnose or repair lungs affected by cancer, trauma or pulmonary disease. For lung cancer, your surgeon may remove nodules, tumors and lymph nodes to diagnose, stage and treat the disease.