With the minimally invasive concept taking hold, patients are now asking if they can undergo minimally invasive treatment for whatever surgery they are having. What is minimally invasive treatment? Does minimally invasive mean small incision? Minimally invasive treatment for lung cancer Minimally invasive surgery is actually essentially a basic technique of modern thoracic surgery. Minimally invasive, as the name implies, means minimal trauma. However, this “minimally invasive” is not just the small incision we can see in appearance, but the overall trauma of the patient should be reduced, while the treatment effect is the same as that of open surgery, so that the wound outside the body is small and the damage inside the body is also small. For example, thoracoscopic surgery commonly used in minimally invasive lung cancer treatment only requires a few holes in the patient’s body, or even a single-hole thoracoscope with only one hole, leaving only a small incision of 4~6 centimeters at the end, which does meet the public’s requirement for minimally invasive from the appearance. However, if the tissues inside the chest cavity are stretched and disturbed excessively during the operation, even the patient’s lung is also stretched, this kind of is not in line with the treatment principle of surgical oncology and does not achieve the effect of minimally invasive. Less bleeding is the greatest minimally invasive treatment. A real minimally invasive treatment for lung cancer requires less intraoperative bleeding for the patient. It is important to know that an excellent thoracoscopic surgery, if the patient has no obvious chest adhesions, usually the intraoperative bleeding is only about 20ml. Specifically in surgical oncology, some soft tissues need to be separated during surgery, and if the tissues are pushed apart by blunt separation, that is, with scalpel handles, hemostatic forceps, etc., blood will ooze after pushing them apart because of the large number of capillaries in these tissues. Especially in Oriental people, on the one hand, our coagulation mechanism may be different from that of Caucasians; on the other hand, many domestic patients have a history of pneumonia and tuberculosis, so there are more lymph node infections and thoracic adhesions in the hilar lymph nodes than in Westerners, and these patients will bleed more if blunt separation is done, which seriously affects the clarity of the operative field and has a high risk of intraoperative hemorrhage. Comparatively speaking, if the method of sharp separation is used, that is, using a scalpel or scissors to do meticulous cutting and clipping, or even using electric knife, electric hook, ultrasonic knife and other instruments to separate, the patient will bleed less and have less damage due to more delicate operation. True minimally invasive surgery should preserve normal lung function as much as possible. There are two major principles in performing lung cancer surgery: first, to remove the tumor as cleanly as possible; second, to preserve the patient’s normal lung function as much as possible. Because the lung has no regenerative capacity, if a part of it is removed, the function of that part will be lost, which in turn will affect the patient’s quality of life. In modern society, quality of life is as important as survival time. Specifically for minimally invasive treatment of lung cancer, for example, some central lung cancers, when thoracoscopic treatment is performed, the diseased lung lobe is removed first, and then the lobe without disease, as well as the arteries and veins of the lung lobe, are reattached through vascular surgery techniques and tracheoplasty. This way the patient can retain more lung function, which is the most minimally invasive treatment for the patient at this time. TIPS: When it comes to minimally invasive treatment of lung cancer, we have to talk about thoracoscopic surgery. As we all know, the incision of thoracoscopic surgery is very small, then, can such a small incision see the inside of the chest cavity clearly? As to whether the thoracoscopic surgery can see the inside of the chest cavity, we can make this analogy: the human chest cavity is equivalent to a room, if we do open surgery, it is equivalent to looking at the inside of the house at the front door of the room. Because the door is large, the whole room can be seen, but we can only stand at the door to see; if we perform small incision surgery for lung cancer, it is the same as standing outside the window of the room and looking in, because the window is small, so we can only see most of the room furnishings, but not the dead corner of the room; if we perform thoracoscopic surgery, it is equivalent to being inside the room and can see the whole room. With the continuous progress of optical and display technology, the resolution of the thoracoscope lens has now exceeded that of the naked eye, so that not only the furnishings of the room can be seen clearly, but even the dead corners can be seen clearly.