Type of Surgery
Information
Last updated: 02/17/2009
In a conventional pneumonectomy, the surgeon removes only the diseased lung itself. The patient is given general anesthesia. An intravenous line inserted into one arm supplies fluids and medication throughout the operation, which usually lasts one...
to three hours.
The surgeon begins the operation by cutting a large opening on the same side of the chest as the diseased lung. This posterolateral thoracotomy incision extends from a point below the shoulder blade around the side of the patient's body along the curvature of the ribs at the front of the chest. Sometimes the surgeon removes part of the fifth rib in order to have a clearer view of the lung and greater ease in removing the diseased organ.
A surgeon performing a traditional pneumonectomy then:
- deflates (collapses) the diseased lung
- ties off the lung's major blood vessels to prevent bleeding into the chest cavity
- clamps the main bronchus to prevent fluid from entering the air passage
- cuts through the bronchus
- removes the lung
- staples or sutures the end of the bronchus that has been cut
- makes sure that air is not escaping from the bronchus
- inserts a temporary drainage tube between the layers of the pleura (pleural space) to draw air, fluid, and blood out of the surgical cavity
- closes the chest incision
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Other Information
A pneumonectomy (or pneumectomy) is a surgical procedure to remove a lung. Removal of just one lobe of the lung is specifically referred to as a lobectomy, and that of a segment of the lung as a wedge resection (or segmentectomy).
The most common cause for a pneumonectomy is to excise tumourous tissue arising from lung cancer. Other indications for lobectomy include a solitary pulmonary nodule (the possibility of undiagnosed small-cell cancer in this instance is not necessarily a reason for avoiding thoracotomy), or bronchiectasis where other forms of treatment have failed, particularly if it is localised and recurrent hemoptysis is present. In the days prior to the use of antibiotics in tuberculosis treatment, tuberculosis was sometimes treated surgically by pneumonectomy.
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