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Mediastinoscopy

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The Transcervical Approach in Thoracic Surgery

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Abstract

Mediastinoscopy and its technical variants, such as extended cervical mediastinoscopy, retrosternal mediastinoscopy and mediastino-thoracoscopy, have diagnostic, staging and therapeutic indications that have to be thoughtfully integrated with the available imaging, metabolic and endoscopic techniques. For lung cancer staging, mediastinoscopy has an average sensitivity and negative predictive values of 0.78 and 0.91, respectively. Video-mediastinoscopy has about the same staging values, but it has advantages over the standard procedure because of its teaching capability. Complication rate is about 3 %, but serious complications, such as bleeding from mediastinal vessels, are rare, and mortality rate is below 0.5 %.

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Acknowledgement

We are most thankful to Dr. Mario Jorge Branda, thoracic surgeon and historian, from the Cetrángalo Hospital, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for calling our attention to the procedure described by Dr. Alfonso R. Albanese and for providing copies of his original publications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Thoracic Surgery, Hospital Universitari Mútua Terrassa, University of Barcelona, and CIBERES Lung Cancer Group, Plaza Dr. Robert 5, Terrassa, Barcelona, 08221, Spain

    Ramón Rami-Porta MD, PhD, FETCS

  2. Department of Thoracic Surgery, Hospital Universitari Mútua Terrassa, University of Barcelona, Plaza Dr. Robert 5, Terrassa, Barcelona, 08221, Spain

    Sergi Call MD, FETCS & Mireia Serra-Mitjans MD

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  1. Ramón Rami-Porta MD, PhD, FETCS
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  2. Sergi Call MD, FETCS
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  3. Mireia Serra-Mitjans MD
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Correspondence to Ramón Rami-Porta MD, PhD, FETCS .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Thoracic Surgery, Pulmonary Hospital, Zakopane, Poland

    Marcin Zieliński

  2. Thoracic Surgery Service, University Hospital Mutua Terrassa, Terrassa, Spain

    Ramón Rami-Porta

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Rami-Porta, R., Call, S., Serra-Mitjans, M. (2014). Mediastinoscopy. In: Zieliński, M., Rami-Porta, R. (eds) The Transcervical Approach in Thoracic Surgery. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54565-8_2

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