Objective To investigate the etiology, symptoms, diagnosis, surgical treatment, and outcomes of acute necrotizing mediastinitis (ANM) in order to guide future diagnosis and treatment of ANM. Methods The clinical data of patients with ANM referred to West China Hospital, Sichuan University from March 2012 to April 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. The etiology, clinical manifestations, demographic characteristics, bacterial culture results, surgical approach and prognostic factors of these patients were summarized. Results A total of 176 patients were enrolled in this study. The median age was 60 ( 0-84) years. There were 124 (70.5%) males and 52 (29.5%) females. The most common origin of infection was neck (n=66, 37.5%). The most common symptom was fever (n=85, 48.3%). Streptococcus constellatus represented the most common pathogens in secretion culture. Surgical treatment was administered to 119 (67.6%) patients through different approaches, including 54 (30.7%) patients of cervical approach, 9 (5.1%) patients of thoracotomy, 18 (10.2%) patients of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS), 7 (4.0%) patients of cervical combined with thoracotomy, 30 (17.0%) patients of cervical combined with VATS, and 1 (0.6%) patient of subxiphoid approach. Among this cohort, 144 (81.8%) patients were cured, while 32 (18.1%) patients died. Age-adjusted Charlson comorbidity index (OR=2.95, P=0.022), perioperative sepsis (OR=2.84, P=0.024), and non-surgical treatment (OR=2.41, P=0.043) were identified as independent predictors of poor outcomes. Conclusion For patients with corresponding history and manifestations of ANM, it is crucial to go through imaging examination to confirm the presence of an abscess and guide the selection of surgical approach. Once the diagnosis of ANM is made, it is imperative to promptly perform surgical intervention for effective drainage. Our study highlights the significance of age-adjusted Charlson comorbidity index, perioperative sepsis and surgical treatment in predicting patients’ outcomes.

BACKGROUND:Sepsis is one of the main causes of mortality in intensive care units(ICUs).Early prediction is critical for reducing injury.As approximately 36%of sepsis occur within 24 h after emergency department(ED)admission in Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care(MIMIC-IV),a prediction system for the ED triage stage would be helpful.Previous methods such as the quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment(qSOFA)are more suitable for screening than for prediction in the ED,and we aimed to find a light-weight,convenient prediction method through machine learning. METHODS:We accessed the MIMIC-IV for sepsis patient data in the EDs.Our dataset comprised demographic information,vital signs,and synthetic features.Extreme Gradient Boosting(XGBoost)was used to predict the risk of developing sepsis within 24 h after ED admission.Additionally,SHapley Additive exPlanations(SHAP)was employed to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the model's results.Ten percent of the patients were randomly selected as the testing set,while the remaining patients were used for training with 10-fold cross-validation. RESULTS:For 10-fold cross-validation on 14,957 samples,we reached an accuracy of 84.1%±0.3%and an area under the receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve of 0.92±0.02.The model achieved similar performance on the testing set of 1,662 patients.SHAP values showed that the five most important features were acuity,arrival transportation,age,shock index,and respiratory rate. CONCLUSION:Machine learning models such as XGBoost may be used for sepsis prediction using only a small amount of data conveniently collected in the ED triage stage.This may help reduce workload in the ED and warn medical workers against the risk of sepsis in advance.

How to improve the performance of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) signal acquisition and the accuracy to authenticate ultra low-frequency mutation are major challenges of minimal residual disease (MRD) detection in solid tumors. In this study, we developed a new MRD bioinformatics algorithm, namely multi-variant joint confidence analysis (MinerVa), and tested this algorithm both in contrived ctDNA standards and plasma DNA samples of patients with early non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Our results showed that the specificity of multi-variant tracking of MinerVa algorithm ranged from 99.62% to 99.70%, and when tracking 30 variants, variant signals could be detected as low as 6.3 × 10 ^-5 variant abundance. Furthermore, in a cohort of 27 NSCLC patients, the specificity of ctDNA-MRD for recurrence monitoring was 100%, and the sensitivity was 78.6%. These findings indicate that the MinerVa algorithm can efficiently capture ctDNA signals in blood samples and exhibit high accuracy in MRD detection.
Humans ; Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung/genetics* ; Lung Neoplasms/genetics* ; Neoplasm, Residual/pathology* ; Biomarkers, Tumor/genetics* ; Computational Biology

Objective     To share the clinical experience of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) anatomic basal segmentectomy by single-direction method. Methods     The clinical data of 352 patients who underwent VATS anatomic basal segmentectomy in West China Hospital between April 2015 and April 2021 were retrospectively reviewed, including 96 males and 256 females with a median age of 50 (range, 26-81) years. All basal segmentectomies were performed under thoracoscopy, through the interlobar fissure or inferior pulmonary ligament approach, and following the strategy of single-direction and the method of "stem-branch". Results    All patients underwent basal segmentectomy successfully (49 patients of uniportal procedure, 3 patients of biportal procedure and 300 patients of triportal procedure) without addition of incisions or conversion to thoracotomy and lobectomy. The median operation time was 118 (range, 45-340) min, median intraoperative blood loss was 20 (range, 5-500) mL, median drainage time was 2 (range, 1-22) d and median postoperative hospital stay was 4 (range, 2-24) d. The postoperative complications included pneumonia in 6 patients, prolonged drainage (air leakage duration>5 d or drainage duration>7 d) in 18 patients, cerebral infarction in 1 patient and other complications in 2 patients. All patients were treated well and discharged without main complaints. No perioperative death happened. Conclusion    VATS anatomic basal segmentectomy is feasible and safe. It can be performed in a simple manner following the strategy of single-direction.

Objective     To compare the perioperative results between uniportal and three-portal thoracoscopic lobectomy for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods     Electronic databases including PubMed, Web of Science, EMbase, CNKI, Wanfang were systematically searched from the establishment of each database until April 2022. Literature screening, data extraction and bias risk assessment were independently conducted by two researchers. All combined results were performed by RevMan 5.3 and Stata 16.0. The quality of the literature and the risk of bias were evaluated using the Cochrane Bias Risk Assessment Tool. Results     Eighteen eligible randomized controlled trials (1 597 patients) were identified eventually, including 800 patients undergoing uniportal thoracoscopic lobectomy and 797 patients undergoing three-portal thoracoscopic lobectomy. Meta-analysis results showed that compared to the three-portal approach, uniportal lobectomy took longer operation time (WMD=7.63, 95%CI 2.36 to 12.91, P=0.005) with less intraoperative blood loss (WMD=–28.81, 95%CI –42.54 to –15.08, P<0.001). Furthermore, patients undergoing uniportal lobectomy achieved lower visual analogue score within 24 hours after the operation (WMD=–1.60, 95%CI –2.26 to –0.94, P<0.001), less volume of drainage after the operation (WMD=–25.30, 95%CI –46.22 to –4.37, P=0.020), as well as shorter drainage duration (WMD=–0.36, 95%CI –0.72 to –0.01, P=0.040). Besides, patients undergoing uniportal lobectomy were also observed with shorter length of hospital stay (WMD=–2.28, 95%CI –2.68 to –1.88, P<0.001) and lower incidence of postoperative complications (RR=0.49, 95%CI 0.38 to 0.63, P<0.001). However, the number of lymph nodes harvested during the operation (WMD=–0.01, 95%CI –0.24 to 0.21, P=0.930) was similar between the two groups. Conclusion     Both uniportal and three-portal thoracoscopic lobectomy for NSCLC are safe and feasible. The uniportal approach is superior in reducing short-term postoperative pain, postoperative complications and shortening the length of hospital stay.

Objective     To summarize the perioperative and long-term outcomes of ground-glass opacity (GGO) dominant early stage lung cancer patients treated by anatomic segmentectomy. Methods     We collected clinical data of 756 patients from Western China Lung Cancer Database, who underwent intentional anatomic segmentectomy [tumor size (T) ≤ 2 cm, GGO ≥ 50%] in the Department of Thoracic Surgery, West China Hospital, Sichuan University from 2009 to 2018. There were 233 males and 523 females at a median age of 53 (25-83) years including 290 (38.4%) patients of simple segmentectomy and 466 (61.6%) patients of complex segmentectomy. All patients were diagnosed as adenocarcinoma, including 338 (44.7%) patients of minimally invasive adenocarcinoma and 418 (55.3%) patients of invasive adenocarcinoma. Results     The median operative time was 115 (38-300) min, the median blood loss was 20 (5-800) mL, 58 (7.7%) patients had postoperative complications and the postoperative stay was 4 (2-24) days. The median follow-up period was 43.0 (30.1-167.9) months. Five-year overall survival rate was 99.5% [95%CI (98.8%, 100.0%)], 5-year recurrence-free survival rate was 98.8% [95%CI (97.5%, 100.0%)], and 5-year lung cancer-specific survival rate was 100.0%. Conclusion    Anatomic segmentectomy has favorable perioperative outcomes and excellent prognosis in GGO dominant early stage lung cancer patients.

Objective     To verify the feasibility and accuracy of the "lung surface intersegmental constant proportion landmarks", developed by our center, in identifying intersegmental planes during pulmonary segmentectomy. Methods    We prospectively enrolled the patients who planned to receive thoracoscopic segmentectomy in West China Hospital of Sichuan University and The Third People's Hospital of Chengdu from September 2021 to October 2021. We took a relatively objective and feasible method, intravenous injection of indocyanine green, in identifying intersegmental planes as standard control. We intraoperatively judged the consistency between "lung surface intersegmental constant proportion landmarks" and intravenous injection of indocyanine green in identifying intersegmental planes. We discerned main landmarks of intersegmental plane by the constant proportion segment module, which was built based on the "lung surface intersegmental constant proportion landmarks", as well as distinguished the planes with discrepant fluorescence by peripheral intravenous indocyanine green injection. When the distance between the landmarks determined by the "ung surface intersegmental constant proportion landmarks" and the segmental boundaries displayed by indocyanine green  fluorescence staining was ≤1 cm, the landmarks were judged to be consistent with the planes with discrepant fluorescence. As long as one of the landmarks was judged to be consistent, the method was considered to be feasible and accurate. Results 聽 聽 A total of 21 patients who underwent thoracoscopic segmentectomy were enrolled, with 5 male and 16 female patients. The median age was 55 years, ranging from 34 to 76 years. A total of 11 patients received left-side surgery, while 10 patients received right-side surgery. In the operations of 21 pulmonary segmentectomies, at least one intersegmental landmark determined by the "lung surface intersegmental constant proportion landmarks" was consistent with the intersegmental plane determined by indocyanine green fluorescence staining in each patient. Conclusion 聽 聽The intersegmental landmarks determined by the "lung surface intersegmental constant proportion landmarks" are consistent with that determined by indocyanine green fluorescence staining. The method of "lung surface intersegmental constant proportion landmarks" is feasible and accurate in identifying intersegmental planes during pulmonary segmentectomy.

Objective     To analyze the perioperative outcomes of uniportal thoracoscopic lobectomy compared with three-port thoracoscopic lobectomy. Methods     Data were extracted from the Western China Lung Cancer Database, a prospectively maintained database at the Department of Thoracic Surgery, West China Hospital, Sichuan University. Perioperative outcomes of the patients who underwent uniportal or three-port thoracoscopic lobectomy for lung cancer during January 2014 through April 2021 were analyzed by using propensity score matching. Altogether 5 817 lung cancer patients were enrolled who underwent thoracoscopic lobectomy (uniportal: 530 patients; three-port: 5 287 patients). After matching, 529 patients of uniportal and 1 583 patients of three-port were included. There were 529 patients with 320 males and 209 females at median age of 58 (51, 65) years in the uniportal group and 1 583 patients with 915 males and 668 females at median age of 58 (51, 65) years in the three-port group. Results     Uniportal thoracoscopic lobectomy was associated with less intraoperative blood loss (20 mL vs. 30 mL, P<0.001), longer operative time (115 min vs. 105 min, P<0.001) than three-port thoracoscopic lobectomy. No significant difference was found between the two groups regarding the number of lymph node dissected, rate of conversion to thoracotomy, incidence of postoperative complication, postoperative pain score within 3 postoperative days, length of hospital stay, or hospitalization expenses. Conclusion     Uniportal video-assisted thoracoscopic lobectomy is safe and effective, and the overall perioperative outcomes are comparable between uniportal and three-port strategies, although the two groups show differences in intraoperative blood loss.

This patient was a 47-year female who underwent carinal resection and reconstruction because of left main bronchial mucoepidermoid carcinoma. She underwent four cycles chemotherapy when recovering from surgery because of subcarinal lymph node metastasis. However, the patient suffered from recurred productive cough and dyspnea during chemotherapy. Bronchoscopic assessment revealed stenosis at the reconstructed carina and left main bronchus five months after surgery. The granulation tissues of the left main bronchus showed no evidence of cancer recurrence. After repeated bronchoscopic resection of granulation tissue combined with bronchial stent placement, the left main bronchial stenosis gradually worsened with granulation tissue growth. Three acid-fast bacilli were found in the granulation tissue harvested ten months after surgery. The reason of postoperative bronchostenosis was confirmed as endobronchial tuberculosis, and antitubercular agents were added. Unfortunately, she had persistent left main bronchostenosis due to irreversible destruction and left pulmonary atelectasis thereafter. Therefore, for the recurring anastomotic granulomas after tracheobronchial reconstruction, the possibility of tuberculosis infection should be considered.

Objective     To identify the risk factors for postoperative recurrence of peripheral solid small-nodule lung cancer (PSSNLC) (T≤2 cm), and to explore the effects of surgery types on prognosis. Methods     We extracted data from Western China Lung Cancer Database (WCLCD), a prospectively maintained database at the Department of Thoracic Surgery, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, and Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)  database for peripheral solid small-nodule lung cancer patients (T≤2 cm N0M0, stageⅠ) who underwent surgery between 2005 and 2016. We used univariable and multivariable logistic regression to analyze risk factors for recurrence of PSSNLC. We applied propensity-score matching to compare the long-term results of segmentectomy and lobectomy, as well as the survival of patients from WCLCD and SEER. We finally included 4 800 patients with PSSNLC (T≤2 cm N0M0)(WCLCD: SEER=354∶4 446). We matched 103 segmentectomies and 350 lobectomies in T≤1 cm, and 280 segmentectomies and 1 067 lobectomies in 1 cm