TITLE:
Pulmonary Resection for Metachronous Lung Cancer Following Contralateral Pneumonectomy
AUTHORS:
Thomas Tsitsias, Prity Gupta, Kelvin W. Lau, Nicholas Harvey, Sridhar Rathinam
KEYWORDS:
Metachronous Lung Cancer; Intermittent Apnea; Limited Resection
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Thoracic Surgery,
Vol.3 No.1,
March
29,
2013
ABSTRACT: Patients who undergo pneumonectomy for lung cancer are at risk of recurrent disease and metachronous tumours in the remaining lung. Establishing a diagnosis can be difficult as biopsy may induce a pneumothorax, whilst resection is limited by remaining lung function. However, pneumonectomy should not be a contraindication to further lung resection. We report two cases of lung cancer resection in the residual lung 6 and 11 years following pneumonectomy respectively. A limited resection can be safely performed for a new pulmonary parenchymal lesion on a background of a previous pneumonectomy.