Understand your thoracic care options
Thoracic (chest) conditions
When doctors talk about thoracic conditions, they usually mean conditions that affect these areas:
- Lungs
- Esophagus (the muscular tube that connects your throat to your stomach)
- Trachea (windpipe)
- Ribs and breastbone
- Muscles and connective tissues in the chest
- Membranes that line your chest cavity and protect your organs
While the chest also contains your heart, doctors talk about heart conditions as cardiac or cardiovascular conditions.
Thoracic conditions include cancer found in any area of the chest, including lung cancer. If an abnormal growth in the lungs appears on a lung cancer screening test, chest X-ray, or CT scan, your doctor may recommend a lung biopsy. A lung biopsy collects samples from lung nodules to examine under a microscope.
Other thoracic conditions include gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), lung diseases such as emphysema, benign tumors, trauma-related injuries, hernias in this region, and others. When lifestyle changes, medicine, and other options don’t ease thoracic condition symptoms, your doctor may suggest surgery.
Thoracic surgery options
There are different ways to perform surgery when you and your doctor decide it’s the best approach for you.
In the past, doctors only performed open thoracic surgery (thoracotomy). Open chest surgeries let doctors look directly at the area they’re operating on, but they require long incisions. Surgeons may also need to separate or remove ribs or crack the breastbone to be able to see where they’re operating.
Today, surgeons perform many procedures with minimally invasive surgery. Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) is one approach. Another is robotic-assisted surgery with the da Vinci system. Both minimally invasive surgical approaches require only a few small incisions. Doctors use the incisions to insert tiny surgical instruments and a camera for viewing.
In VATS, doctors stand next to the patient. They use special long-handled tools to perform surgery while looking at magnified images on a video screen.
In surgery with da Vinci, your doctor is in the room but seated at a special console. The console lets the surgeon view the surgery area in magnified, high-definition 3D. The surgeon guides the miniaturized camera and wristed instruments from the console to perform surgery.
Robotic-assisted thoracic procedures
- Lung biopsy
- Lung surgery
- Esophagectomy (surgery to remove some or all of the esophagus)
- Mediastinal mass resection (surgery to remove tumors in the area between the lungs that contains the heart)
- Thymectomy (removal of the thymus gland)
- Lymphadenectomy (lymph node removal)
Talk with your doctor if you have any additional questions about these procedures.