Chest Wall Resection and Reconstruction

Lung cancer invasion of the chest wall is considered to occur in approximately 5% of all patients who had undergone lung cancer resection. Surgical resection is recognized as a standard treatment, and surgical treatment plays a major role because survival is highly dependent on the completeness of the resection. On the other hand, prognosis is still poor in cases with mediastinal lymph node involvement, and the indications for surgery remain controversial in such cases, with increasing number of reported perioperative chemoradiotherapy cases. In addition, the use of minimally invasive surgery combined with thoracoscopy has become widespread in recent years, and indications are being considered for chest wall resection cases. In this paper, we review the results of operation for lung cancer with chest wall invasion other than those for superior sulcus tumors and discuss the role of surgical treatment and surgical resection and reconstruction techniques.