VATS vs Lobectomy
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Post-treatment survival difference between open lobectomy and video-assisted thoracic surgery in early stage non-small cell lung cancer patients in England
IRAS ID
253638
Contact name
Aamir Khakwani
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Nottingham
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 1 days
Research summary
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer related deaths in United Kingdom (UK) and surgery offers the best prospects of cure in patients. Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) has become a viable option for treatment for patients undergoing curative lung cancer surgery, which is also associated with less postoperative pain and complications, low surgical morbidity and shorter hospitalisation events.
The OPCS- Classification of Interventions and Procedure version 4 list collects data of surgical procedure including surgical resections. However there is no unique code for VATS lobectomy and they are all grouped together in OPCS-4 codes for lobectomy E54.2 & E54.3. In 2016, data for the Lung Cancer Clinical Outcomes Project, which analyses lung cancer surgical activity in England, sent back the data to the 28 NHS lung cancer specialist surgical centres in England to obtain more details on surgical procedure (that already happened in 2015) and differentiate the type of surgery performed on lung cancer patients. This provided an opportunity to analyse the use of VATS in England and to compare the survival for patients undergoing different types of lobectomy procedures.
To assess the independent effect of the procedure on survival, we will conduct a survival analysis to estimate overall survival difference between the two groups and also look at differences in survival at different points in time post-surgery including 30-day, 90-day, 6 months and 1 year after surgery.REC name
North West - Liverpool Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/NW/0739
Date of REC Opinion
16 Oct 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion