Important Determinant of Lung Cancer Patients: Surgical volume
Recent research has found that an important factor of mortality for lung cancer patients is annual volume of surgical resection procedures done by the surgeon. Dr. Christian Finley, who is affiliated with the Department of Surgery at St Joe’s and McMaster University, presented the findings of this study at the American Association for Thoracic Surgery Annual Meeting on April 28th.
Dr. Finley discusses that surgeon volume is something to be highly considered and important in patient care. The study took 124 physicians, at 45 institutions, with over 8000 patients with non-small cell lung cancer undergoing pneumonectomy, lobectomy, or wedge reduction. All surgeons were trained as general thoracic surgeons. There were 77% of patients that had a lobectomy, around 10% that had a pneumonectomy, and about 12%had a wedge reduction. They found that there was a higher mortality rate for those that had the pneumonectomy surgery, which is normally a high-risk procedure with a low mortality rate, rather than a lobectomy or a wedge reduction.
Dr. Finley states that for each additional 10-patient volume increase for surgeons, the risk of performing a pneumonectomy decreased by almost 10%. Therefore, Dr. Finley suggests this study represents that surgeries are more likely to be successful if surgeons have a higher annual surgical volume, thus increasing mortality rates in lung cancer patients. Other variables were considered such as the patient age, year of procedure, patient gender, and patient co-morbidities.
Read the article in Medical News Today here: http://bit.ly/1bmJZ0s