Video-Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery in Diagnosing Lymphomas

This article continues a series of papers dwelling on endo-surgery techniques in diagnosing lymphomas. It describes the history of the thoracoscopic surgery and its potential and current use when malignant lymphoproliferative diseases with involvement of chest organs and tissues. It provides brief description of basic instruments, equipment and technique of surgical interventions via the thoracic access. It lists indications and contraindications for the thoracoscopic surgery. In addition, the paper presents analysis of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgeries in 178 patients with suspected malignant lymphoproliferative diseases. During these surgeries, samples for further morphological assessment were obtained from all patients. Lymphomas were confirmed in 120 patients. The article contains two case reports on the video-assisted thoracoscopic interventions performed.