Wickii T. Vigneswaran, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Loyola University Medical Center 2160 S First Avenue, Maywood, IL, 60153, USA.

Abstract
Resection is the principal mode of treatment for early stage non-small cell lung cancer and the only treatment that is potentially curative. As such, surgical approach can be a crucial factor in successful treatment. Over the past three decades, the surgical modalities within thoracic surgery have undergone massive changes, mainly through the introduction of minimally invasive surgical techniques, such as video-assisted thoracic surgery and robot-assisted thoracic surgery, into the field. The advent of minimally invasive surgical techniques ushered in several advantages over open thoracotomy in the forms of reduced post-operative length of stay, surgical morbidity, functional recovery, and pain. Despite these advantages, opponents of these techniques were weary of their effectiveness in measures such as number of lymph nodes resected, disease-free survivability, cost, and procedure duration. As these techniques developed and evolved, their acceptance has greatly increased as literature suggests no reductions in oncologic effectiveness, nodal upstaging, disease-free survivability, or overall survivability. More recently, interest has been growing in robot-assisted thoracic surgery as some groups have published results indicating several preferences for the robot-assisted approach over the video-assisted approach when considering outcomes such as morbidity, blood loss, length of stay, and lymph node dissection. In this review, we attempt to explore the current literature surrounding these techniques in hopes of elucidating more about their differences based on recent studies.

Keywords
Lung cancer, Pulmonary Adenocarcinoma, Squamous Cell Carcinoma, Lung resection, Robotic surgery

Cite this paper
Mark Jaradeh, Brett Curran, Wickii T. Vigneswaran, Current Status of Minimally Invasive Surgical Approaches for Early Stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Systematic Review , SCIREA Journal of Clinical Medicine. Volume 5, Issue 4, August 2020 | PP. 76-88.

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