Role of Surgery in Isolated Pulmonary Metastases with our Clinical Experience

Objective: lung metastases must be consider in a different way compared with the others. it is known that, in pulmonary metastasis, cases that had complete surgical resections have longer survival. in this study, we examined the role of surgery in metastatic lung lesions and contribution of the pulmonary metastasectomy to survival in the light of our clinical experience.material and method: a total of 19 patients (11 females, 8 males; median age 45 years; range 21 to 68 years) who underwent pulmonary metastasectomy between years 2005 and 2013 were retrospectively reviewed. patients were classified according to age, gender, primary histology of tumor, disease-free interval, radiological ve intraoperative number of metastatic lesions, operative techniques, follow-up period.results: thoracotomy was performed to all patients except one who operated with videothoracoscopik surgery. preoperative thorax computed tomographies were detected 64 metastatic nodules which were detected as 81 after the operations. the only complication was prolonged air leak and occured in 3 patients. three patients were died in postoperative first year because of multipl metastases. seven patients are following with variable metastatic lesions while the rest are following with disease-free.conclusion: pulmonary metastasectomy in selected patients that primary tumor is under control and suitable for surgery, is known to effect the survival positively. thoracotomy and a careful palpation is still preferred mostly to detect the nodules which were not marked at thorax computed tomography. larger series are needed to find out the clear contribution of the number of metastases to survival.