Objective To assess the usefulness video-assisted mediastinoscopy (VM) for diagnosis of disease characteristic with mediastinal mass. Analyze the correlations of clinical features of the disease with the pathologic diagnosis. Methods Between July 2000 and March 2006, 97 undiagnosed patients with mediastinal mass in chest radiography underwent biopsy of mediastinal lesions by either cervical mediastinoscopy (n=69) or parasternal mediastionoscopy (n=28). We also analyzed the correlation of symptoms, location and extent of the lesion with the pathologic diagnosis. Results All 97 patients recovered smoothly without postoperative complications. Histologic diagnosis was obtained in 96 patients. Patients with hoarse, dysphagia and superior vena cava obstruction syndrome indicate malignant lesions (26/26). The most common diseases in the super-anterior mediastinum are lymphoma(7/19), thymoma(4/19) and small cell lung cancer(SCLC) (4/19);The most common disease in the middle mediastinum are metastasis of non small cell lung cancer(11/37), sarcoidosis (9/37)and SCLC(7/37); The most possible disease involved both mediastinum and lung hilar lymph-node are scalerdosis(32/41) and SCLC(5/41). Conclusion Mediastinoscopy is effective and safe methods to establish a histologic diagnosis in patients with mediastinal mass. It is possible to make primary evaluation on some of these patients according to the typical symptoms and location, extent of the mass involvement.

Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery in the treatment of esophageal leiomyoma.Methods Clinical data of 49 patients with esophageal leiomyoma from September 1996 to February 2009 treated by video-assisted thoracoscopic enucleation were reviewed retrospectively.Three or four trocars were used during the operation.The procedure of the surgery was similar to that of open thoracoscopic enucleation.Results In the 49 patients,video-assisted thoracoscopic leiomyoma enucleation was successfully completed in 42 cases.The other 7 patients were converted to open thoracotomy because of the following reasons:dense pleural adhesion in 2,location failure of small tumor(

Objective Based on the mathematical models established in Department of Thoracic Surgery of Peking University People's Hospital for predicting malignant probability for solitary pulmonary nodules ( SPN),another continuous 145 patients with SPN were assessed to verify the accuracy of the model comparing with foreign models (Mayo model and VA model).Methods A retrospective cohort study in our institution included 145 patients with definite pathological diagnosis of SPN from Oct 2009 to Aug 2011,72 males and 73 females,average age (59.4 ± 12.2 ) years old.Clinical data included age,gender,course of disease,symptoms,history and quantity of smoking,time of smoking cessation,history of tumor,family history of tumor,tumor site,diameter,calcification,speculation,border,lobulation,traction of pleural,vascular convergence sign,and cavity.These raw data were incorporated into our model,Mayo model and VA model,the probability of malignant in every patient was calculated separately according to methods described before.The sensitivity and specificity of these 3 models were evaluated then.Afterwards,calibration of the 3 models was assessed by the Hosmer-Lemeshow (H-L) test.Discrimination was tested by calculating the area under curve ( AUC ) after the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn.Results 32.4％ (47 in 145 patients) of the nodules were malignant,and 67.6％ (98 in 145 patients) were benign in this group.Verified the accuracy of our model with sensitivity of 94.9％,specificity of 66.0％,positive predictive value of 85.3％ and negative predictive value of 86.1％.The H-L test showed good fitting in all models ( P ＞0.05 ).The AUC for our model was 0.874 ±0.035,and 0.784 ± 0.041 in Mayo model (P =0.004 compared to our model),0.754 ± 0.041 in VA model (P =0.002 compare to our model).And,there was not significant statistical difference between Mayo model and VA model (P ＞0.05 ).Our model has the best precision indexed by AUC,which were statistically significant differential compared with Mayo model and VA model.Conclusion The model established by our center has superior value than foreign counterparts in predicting the probability of malignant or benign in patients with SPN.

Objective To explore the effect and method of the theory teaching of general practice course for eight-year program of clinical medical students. Methods The course of General Medicine was set up for 87 students from two grades in their fourth school year. All of them attended a closed-book exami-nation when they finished the lectures. The satisfaction rates, necessity and the suggestion of teaching and assessment were collected from the questionnaire. Results The examination results of the two grade students were (80.92±7.26) and (83.76±5.75); The satisfaction rate was 40.2％ (35/87); Necessity of the courses was between 3.6 to 4.1 (5-point-Likert-scale). The way of teaching method students chose was dif-ferent by course content. Conclusion The theory teaching of general practice course for eight-year program of clinical medical students needs more reform from curriculum designing, teaching methods, faculty train-ing and evaluation methods.

ObjectiveTo evaluate the feasibility of the completely thoracoscopic lobectomy for clinical N0 and postoperatively pathological N2 non-small-cell lung cancer(NSCLC).MethodsFrom Sep.2006 to Jan.2010, 216 patients with NSCLC received completely thoracoscopic lobectomy in our center.Two hundred and six patients were clinical N0 preoperatively(103 males and 103 females, median age of 62.3 years, rang 29 to 85 years).They were divided into two groups based on postoperatively pathological staging, pN0 group and pN2 group.Some perioperative factors including age, gender,tumor size,tumor location,pathological type, pathological differentiation,rate of conversion to thoractomy,operation time,blood loss,lymph node dissection, time of drainge, hospitalization and complications were studied and compared between two groups.Results There were 203 cases of lobectomy, 2 cases of composite lobectomy and 1 case of pneumonectomy.All procedures were carried out safely without serious complication except for one operative death result from respiratory failure.There were 168 cases in pN0 group and 38 cases in pN2 group.Age and gender were similar between two groups.The tumor size in pN0 group was smaller than that in pN2 group [ (2.6 ± 1.6) cm vs (3.7 ± 1.9) cm, P = 0.001 ].The tumors in pN0 group were lesser appearance in the bilateral lower lobes (31.0％ vs 50.0％, P = 0.026).There was a approximate proportion of adenocarcinoma in two groups (82.7％ vs 73.7％, P = 0.181), but the proportion of poorly differentiated carcinoma in pN0 group was significantly lower than that in pN2 group(19.0％ vs 42.1％, P = 0.002).There were no differences in the rate of conversion to thoractomy(7.1％ vs 7.9％, P = 1.000), operation time[ (196.1 ± 53.7) min vs (208.6 ± 56.8) min, P = 0.202 ], blood loss[ (253.2 ±247.9) ml vs(279.0±183.3) ml, P=0.475], time of drainage[ (7.7 ±3.2) days vs (9.7 ±6.3) days,P=0.066], hospitalization[ (10.6 ±4.6) days vs (13.0 ±7.6) days, P =0.063]and complications(12.5％ vs 21.1％,P =0.171).The stations of mediastinal lymph node dissection were equivalent in two groups(3.1 ± 1.2 vs 3.3 ± 1.1, P =0.237) , but there were fewer numbers of mediastinal lymph node dissection in pN0 group (9.9 ± 6.8 vs 12.7 ± 8.4, P =0.038).ConclusionCompletely thoracoscopic lobectomy is a feasible surgical therapy for cN0-pN2 non-small-cell lung cancer without loss of curability.

ObjectiveTo study the risk factors of mediastinal lymph node metastasis in patients with ≤3 cm peripheral non-small cell lung cancer.MethodsFrom January 2000 to December 2010,a total of 281 patients with NSCLC[152 men and 129 women,aged ( 60.31±12.13) years;≤ 3 cm in diameter]underwent lobectomy or partial resection with systematic mediastinal lymphadenectomy in hospital .Clinical data included age,gender,symptoms,history and quantity of smoking history,history of tumor,family history of tumor,site,diameter,calcification,speculation,border,lobulation,traction of pleural,vascular convergence sign,cavity were collected compaired and analyzed.Single and multi-variate analysis was performed to determine the independent risk of occult N2 nodal involvement.ResultsLogistic regression analysis show seven clinical characteristics (fleshless( OR:22.262),history of tumor(OR:5.485),diameter( 0R:3.788),density( OR;5.850),traction of pleural (OR:1.371),border ( OR:8.259) and cavity (OR:7.124) were risk factors.ConclusionFleshless,history of tumor,diameter,density,traction of pleural and the border and cavity were independent predictors of malignancy in patients with ≤3 cm peripheral non-small cell lung cancer.

Objective:To estimate the probability of N2 lymph node metastasis and to assist physicians in making diagnosis and treatment decisions.Methods:We reviewed the medical records of 739 patients with computed tomography-defined stage Ⅰ non-small cell lung cancer ( NSCLC ) that had an exact tumor-node-metastasis stage after surgery.A random subset of three fourths of the patients ( n =554 ) were selected to develop the prediction model.Logistic regression analysis of the clinical characteristics was used to estimate the independent predictors of N2 lymph node metastasis.A prediction model was then built and externally validated by the remaining one fourth ( n=185 ) patients which made up the validation data set.The model was also compared with 2 previously described models.Results:We iden-tified 4 independent predictors of N2 disease:a younger age, larger tumor size, central tumor location, and adenocarcinoma or adenosquamous carcinoma pathology.The model showed good calibration ( Hos-mer-Lemeshow test:P=0.923) with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.748 (95%confidence interval, 0.710-0.784) .When validated with all the patients of group B, the AUC of our model was 0.781 (95% CI: 0.715 -0.839) and the VA model was 0.677 (95% CI:0.604-0.744) (P =0.04).When validated with T1 patients of group B, the AUC of our model was 0.837 (95%CI:0.760 -0.897) and Fudan model was 0.766 (95% CI: 0.681 -0.837) (P <0.01) .Conclusion:Our prediction model estimated the pretest probability of N2 disease in computed tomography-defined stageⅠNSCLC and was more accurate than the existing models.Use of our model can be of assistance when making clinical decisions about invasive or expensive mediastinal staging procedures.

Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of induction concurrent chemoradiation therapy with weekly docetaxel and cisplatin(DP) for stage Ⅲ A-N2 lung cancer.Methods Eighteen patients diagnosed of stage Ⅲ A-N2 NSCLC in our center were enrolled from March,2011 to November,2013.The induction regimen consisted of 5 cycles of docetaxel(20 mg/m2) and cisplatin(20 mg/m2) administered intravenously on days 1,8,15,22 and 29 with concurrent thoracic radiotherapy in fractions of 1.8Gy,to a total dose of 45Gy.Patients proceeded to surgery,if no progressive disease occurred,followed by adjuvant chemotherapy with DP strategy.Results Eighteen patients were enrolled and 12 underwent surgery.The tumor response for the induction therapy was 1 CR,10 PRs,6 SDs and 1 PD.Five of 18 patients presented with level 3 or above adverse effects,among which were 2 neutropenia,1 liver toxicity,1 anemia and 1 lymph node infection.The median operation time was 290 min,intraoperative blood loss was 350 ml,length for postoperative drainage was 5 d,and time to discharge was 7 d.The mediastinal lymphnodedownstaging rate was 50％ (3 pN0 cases and 3 pN1 ones),92％ of the operated patients reached complete resection.One-year survival was 75.9％ and 1-year progression free survival was 49.2％.Conclusion Weekly docetaxel and cisplatin strategy in induction concurrent chemoradiotherapy for stage Ⅲ A-N2 NSCLC patients has been validated to be safe and effective.

Objective To study the correlation between prognosis and the sequence of vessel interruption during thoracoscopic lobectomy for early stage non-small cell lung cancer.Methods Retrospective analysis of the 1 134 cases underwent lobectomy between September 2006 and October 2012 was conducted.There were 277 cases underwent completely thoracoscopic lobectomy and confirmed as stage Ⅰ-Ⅱ non-small cell lung cancer by pathology.The cases were divided into three groups according to the vessel interruption sequence:pulmonary vein ligated first(Group V) 152 cases,pulmonary artery ligated first (Group A) 76 cases,and artery-vein-artery group(Group M) 49 cases.The preoperative condition,operative factors and the prognosis of the three groups were reviewed.All of the data for statistical analysis,count data by chi-square test.Measurement data using t test,Kaplan-Meier method applied survival analysis,Log-rank test and Cox regression model analysis for single factor and multiple factors.Results The groups were similar in age,sex,smoking history,pulmonary infection history,main comorbidity,malignant history,diameter,tumor maker and preoperative lung function.The blood loss during the operation is 109.9 ml in Group A,which is significantly less than Group V (157.5 ml),and Group M had the median blood loss 123.7 ml (P =0.027).The length of operation and postoperative complications were similar among the three groups.The recurrent conditions were also similar among the three groups,which were mostly distant metastasis.There was no significant difference statistically in disease free survival(DFS) and overall survival(OS) among the three groups.Conclusion Ligating the pulmonary artery first could decrease the blood loss during completely thoracoscopic lobectomy for stage Ⅰ-Ⅱ non-small cell lung cancer.But it did not have any influence on the surgical difficulty and postoperative complications.The sequence of vessel interruption during lobectomy by thoracoscopic surgery did not have difference effect on the prognosis of lung cancer.

Objective To summarize and analyze the clinical features of familial spontaneous pneumothorax.Methods During April 2001 to March 2013,the clinical data of 65 familial spontaneous pneumothorax from 21 families were retrospected and summarized.Contrasting with previous literature,the clinical features of familial spontaneous pneumothorax were analyzed.Results Patients in one family vary from 2 to 6,average 3.1.Families in which patients distribute in one generation,two generations and three generations were 19.0％,61.9％ and 19.0％ respectively.Male/female ratio of patients was.Mean onset age was 36.2 ± 12.2 ; Body mass index (BMI) of male and female patients were 24.0 ± 2.6 and 22.6 ± 3.0.32.7％ patients suffered bilateral pneumothorax.The recurrence rate after non-operative treatment was 50.0％.Conclusion Compared with sporadic spontaneous pneumothorax,Familial spontaneous pneumothorax has the following features:The incidence in man and woman was more similar; The onset age was older; Lanky body is less common; More were bilateral pneumothorax; Multiple pulmonary bullae are more common; Patients with non-surgical treatment have a higher recurrence rate.