Thoracoscopy is a

medical procedure A medical procedure is a course of action intended to achieve a result in the delivery of healthcare. A medical procedure with the intention of determining, measuring, or diagnosis, diagnosing a patient condition or parameter is also called a medi ...

involving internal examination,

biopsy A biopsy is a medical test commonly performed by a surgeon, interventional radiologist, an interventional radiologist, or an interventional cardiology, interventional cardiologist. The process involves the extraction of sampling (medicine), sample ...

and/or resection/

drainage Drainage is the natural or artificial removal of a surface's water and sub-surface water from an area with excess water. The internal drainage of most agricultural soils can prevent severe waterlogging (anaerobic conditions that harm root gro ...

disease A disease is a particular abnormal condition that adversely affects the structure or function (biology), function of all or part of an organism and is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical condi ...

mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

es within the

pleural cavity The pleural cavity, or pleural space (or sometimes intrapleural space), is the potential space between the pleurae of the pleural sac that surrounds each lung. A small amount of serous pleural fluid is maintained in the pleural cavity to enabl ...

, usually with video assistance. Thoracoscopy may be performed either under

general anaesthesia General anaesthesia (UK) or general anesthesia (US) is medically induced loss of consciousness that renders a patient unarousable even by painful stimuli. It is achieved through medications, which can be injected or inhaled, often with an analges ...

or under

sedation Sedation is the reduction of irritability or agitation by administration of sedative drugs, generally to facilitate a medical procedure or diagnostic procedure. Examples of drugs which can be used for sedation include isoflurane, diethyl ether, ...

with

local anaesthetic A local anesthetic (LA) is a medication that causes absence of all sense, sensation (including pain) in a specific body part without loss of consciousness, providing local anesthesia, as opposed to a general anesthetic, which eliminates all sen ...

History

Thoracoscopy was first performed by Sir Francis Cruise of the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin in conjunction with Dr Samuel Gordon in 1865. It was further developed by

Hans Christian Jacobaeus Hans Christian Jacobaeus (29 May 1879 – 29 October 1937) was a Swedish internist born in Skarhult. In 1916 he became a professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. From 1925 until his death in 1937, he was a member of the Nobel P ...

, a Swedish

internist Internal medicine, also known as general medicine in Commonwealth nations, is a medical specialty for medical doctors focused on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases in adults. Its namesake stems from "treatment of diseases of th ...

in 1910 for the treatment of tuberculous intra-thoracic adhesions. He used a

cystoscope Cystoscopy is endoscopy of the urinary bladder via the urethra. It is carried out with a cystoscope. The urethra is the tube that carries urine from the bladder to the outside of the body. The cystoscope has lenses like a telescope or microscop ...

to examine the thoracic cavity, developing his technique over the next twenty years. Today, thoracoscopy is performed using specialized thoracoscopes. These instruments include a

light source Light, visible light, or visible radiation is electromagnetic radiation that can be visual perception, perceived by the human eye. Visible light spans the visible spectrum and is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400– ...

and a

lens A lens is a transmissive optical device that focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements'') ...

for viewing and may have ports through which other instruments may be inserted for the purpose of tissue removal and manipulation.

Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery

Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) is a

surgical Surgery is a medical specialty that uses manual and instrumental techniques to diagnose or treat pathological conditions (e.g., trauma, disease, injury, malignancy), to alter bodily functions (e.g., malabsorption created by bariatric surgery ...

operation involving thoracoscopy, usually performed by a thoracic surgeon using general or local/regional anaesthesia with additional sedation as necessary. It has historically also been referred to as ''pleuroscopy''. A wide variety of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures may be performed with this technique which has become very popular and increasingly so since the early 1990s. Prior to this, limited diagnostic procedures were done using variations on the cystoscope since 1910. Advances in direct optical visualization were quickly surpassed when video cameras were attached to the

endoscopes An endoscopy is a procedure used in medicine to look inside the body. The endoscopy procedure uses an endoscope to examine the interior of a hollow organ or cavity of the body. Unlike many other medical imaging techniques, endoscopes are insert ...

. The advent of endoscopic stapling was also a major advance so that complicated procedures such as pulmonary lobectomy could be performed safely. VATS can be useful for the diagnosis of undefined

interstitial lung disease Interstitial lung disease (ILD), or diffuse parenchymal lung disease (DPLD), is a group of respiratory diseases affecting the interstitium (the tissue) and space around the alveoli (air sacs) of the lungs. It concerns alveolar epithelium, pulm ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control Diagnostic surgery Endoscopy Respiratory system procedures Thoracic surgical procedures Pulmonary thoracic surgery

History

Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery

See also

References

External links