Long-term complaints after minimally invasive thoracic surgery or after thoracotomy

Background: Minimally invasive techniques are now frequently used in genera l thoracic surgery. More than 30 % of all minimally invasive procedures are operations in patients with spontaneous pneumothorax. Recently, it has bee n shown that the video-assisted approach compared to the standard anterolat eral thoracotomy results in a significant reduction of the early postoperat ive pain. However, little is known about the influence of video-assisted su rgery on long-term complaints. Methods: We analyzed the frequency and chara cteristics of chronic complaints in 60 patients after video-assisted operat ions for spontaneous pneumothorax using a standardized questionnaire. For c omparison, 27 patients after anterolateral thoracotomy for benign diseases were interviewed 24 months postoperatively using the same questionnaire. Re sults: After minimally invasive surgery and a median observation time of 59 months, 19 (31.7 %) out of 60 patients suffered from chronic complaints. T wo of them (3.3 %) required daily oral pain medication. On a visual analog pain scale (ranging from 0 to 100), 17 patients described a pain intensity of < 20 and 2 (3.3 %) patients > 50. After thoracotomy 14 (51.8 %) out of 2 7 patients suffered from chronic complaints, 5 (18.5 %) of them with regula r use of oral pain medications. The mean pain intensity (analog scale) was 3.6 points after minimally invasive operations and 14.4 points after thorac otomy (P = 0.01). Conclusions: In conclusion, even after minimally invasive thoracic operations some patients suffer from chronic complaints. However, they are less frequent and of lower intensity than after thoracotomy.