If you’ve been diagnosed with lung cancer, one of your first consultations will likely be with a thoracic surgeon to determine whether your cancer can be treated with surgery, and which treatment approaches would be best for you.
Lung cancer surgery
Sai Yendamuri, MD, FACS, Chair of Department of Thoracic Surgery and Grace Dy, MD, at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, sat down to answer some of the internet's most-searched-for questions related to lung cancer.
Surgical advances, such as video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS), have replaced the Chamberlain procedure and offer the surgeon a better way to examine the lungs, determine the extent of the disease and get higher-quality biopsies.
Surgery remains the primary treatment for early-stage lung cancer, and most commonly that means a procedure called lobectomy, which removes about one-third to one-half of the lung with the tumor. It’s the one treatment that offers patients with lung cancer their best option for prolonged survival.