Effect of thoracoscopic and thoracotomy on postoperative wound complications in patients with lung cancer: A meta‐analysis

Because of the difficult surgical procedures, patients with lung cancer who have received thoracic surgery tend to have postoperative complications. It may lead to postoperative complications like wound infection, wound haematoma and pneumothorax. A lot of research has assessed the effect of various surgery methods on postoperative complications in pulmonary cancer. The purpose of this meta‐analysis is to establish if thoracoscopic is superior to that of thoracotomy in the rate of post‐operative complications. From the beginning to the end of June 2023, we performed an exhaustive search on four main databases for key words. The Hazard of Bias in Non‐Randomized Interventional Studies (ROBINS‐I) was evaluated in the literature. In the end, 13 trials that fulfilled the eligibility criteria underwent further statistical analyses. The results showed that thoracoscopic intervention decreased the risk of post operative wound infection (dominant ratio [OR], 3.00; 95% confidence margin [CI], 1.98, 4.55; p < 0.00001) and air‐leakage after operation (OR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.04, 1.63; p = 0.02). There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of the rate of haemorrhage after operation (OR, 0.10; 95% CI, 0.73, 1.66; p = 0.63). Our findings indicate that thoracoscopic is less likely to cause post operative infection and gas leakage than thoracotomy, and it does not decrease the risk of postoperative haemorrhage. As some of the chosen trials are too small to conduct meta‐analyses, care must be taken when handling the data. In the future, a large number of randomized, controlled trials will be required to provide additional evidence for this research.