Surgeon's detection of lung nodules with intraoperative ultrasound during thoracoscopic surgery: experience of a single centre.

Abstract OBJECTIVEVideo-Assisted Thoracic Surgery (VATS) resection, of deep-seated and nodules smaller than 3 cm, is very hard.Solitary, small and deep-seated pulmonary nodules are difficult to palpate or to see during VATS. We aimed to evaluated the validity of Intraoperative lung ultrasound (ILU) to visualize solitary and deep-seated pulmonary nodules smaller than 3 cm to enhance knowledge on the ultrasound morphological patterns.RESULTSUS processor was inserted by expert ultrasound surgeon into the chest through the operating hole, and the mediastinal, costal and diaphragmatic surfaces of the lung were explored.VATS- Ultrasound (VATS-US) allows to identify size, localization and Ultrasound (US) pattern of the lesions of interest.Accuracy of Intraoperative Lung Ultrasound for the detection of pulmonary nodules was calculated-comparing the two groups; the first group in which the patients did not undergo intraoperative ultrasound and the second group in which the patients underwent intraoperative ultrasound.Student's t-test (p<0,0001) showed that the accuracy of intraoperative ultrasound by comparing detection time of nodules in the two groups.Intracavitary VATS-US is a reliable, feasible, real-time and effective method of localization of parenchymal lung nodules during selected wedge resection procedures.