Lung Cancer Treatment: From Tradition to Innovation

Abstract

Lung cancer (LC) is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer and the primary cause of cancer death worldwide in 2020. LC treatment is associated with huge costs for patients and society; consequently, there is an increasing interest in the prevention, early detection with screening, and development of new treatments. Its surgical management accounts for at least 90% of the activity of thoracic surgery departments. Surgery is the treatment of choice for early-stage non-small cell LC. In this article, we discuss the state of the art of thoracic surgery for surgical management of LC. We start by describing the milestones of LC treatment, which are lobectomy and an adequate lymphadenectomy, and then we focus on the traditional and innovative minimally invasive surgical approaches available: video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) and robotic-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (RATS). A brief overview of the innovation and future perspective in thoracic surgery will close this mini-review.