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Ann Thorac Surg 2006;82:385-387
© 2006 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

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Editorial

Will Lung Volume Reduction Surgery Be Widely Applied?

Former Director, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland

^_* Address correspondence to Dr Lenfant, PO Box 83027, Gaithersburg, MD 20883 (Email: lenfantc@prodigy.net).

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The article titled "Long-Term Follow-Up of Patients Receiving Lung-Volume-Reduction Surgery Versus Medical Therapy for Severe Emphysema" [1] published in this issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery is the latest in a series of papers by the National Emphysema Treatment Trial (NETT) Research Group. The first, published in 1999, introduced the rationale and design of the NETT [2]. In 2001, a publication [3] presented data from a well-defined group (69) of high-risk patients who were found to be unlikely to benefit from the surgery. Thereafter, patients meeting the criteria described in this publication were no longer recruited in the NETT. A 2003 paper [4] presented data from 608 surgical-therapy patients and 610 medical-therapy patients who had been followed for a median of 2.4 years [4], some for over 4 years. This paper also included data from the previously identified high-risk patient group [2]: after a median follow-up of 2.4 years, mortality rates in this high-risk group were 60% in surgical-therapy patients and 42.8% in medical-therapy patients (Table 1). The article included in this issue of The Annals reports on the same patients who were presented in the 2003 publication, but now with a median follow-up of 4.3 years, with some patients followed for over 7 years.

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Ann. Thorac. Surg. 2006 82: 431-443. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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