Maimonides Medical Center has for decades led the adoption of new surgical techniques to improve the individualized care offered to lung cancer patients, from diagnosis to lifesaving procedures.
“We have refined the process of figuring out which operations are best for which patients,” said Jason Shaw, MD, Director of General Thoracic Surgery at Maimonides Medical Center and Director of the Maimonides Lung Cancer Screening Program .
For example, Maimonides has pioneered a variety of minimally invasive methods. From video-assisted and robot-assisted thoracoscopic surgery to image-guided videoscopic surgery, the new techniques make surgery quicker and safer. “We are now able to safely remove cancer in ways that spare the lungs as much as possible,” Dr. Shaw said. “Instead of pneumectomies, we can now more frequently perform lobectomies and segmentectomies. This development means that we can treat more people, including those who may have less lung capacity to begin with.”
Less Invasive, While Also Allowing Clinicians to Reach Hard-to-Access Locations
Maimonides surgeons also perform cutting-edge, minimally invasive diagnostic procedures. Using endobronchial ultrasounds and navigational bronchoscopies, physicians can identify cancerous tissues in locations that have been hard to access in the past.
The physicians are also using new methods to control pain. “We are trying to get patients away from narcotics, so we’re using advanced nerve blocks that freeze the nerves,” Dr. Shaw said. “This technique results in less pain and allows patients to continue doing what they would usually do in their lives, whether getting back to work, spending time with family, traveling, enjoying retirement, or exploring this post-pandemic world.”
All of these innovations mean that patients spend less time in the hospital. “Our average length of stay is four days, while historically, for these types of conditions in other nonspecialized centers, it’s closer to a week,” Dr. Shaw said. “And at Maimonides specifically, we have not had a perioperative mortality doing a lobectomy for lung cancer in five years.”
A Record of Excellence for Minimally Invasive Procedures
Additionally, a large percentage of Maimonides patients are aided by these techniques. “We are a high outlier, in a good way, in terms of the percentage of patients with early-stage cancers that undergo minimally invasive lobectomies,” Dr. Shaw said. “While across the county, approximately 50 percent of patients get minimally invasive surgeries; at Maimonides, it’s 90 percent.
“In fact, Maimonides was an early adopter of these techniques. We have been doing minimally invasive lobectomies since 2008 and robotics beginning around 2013. Since that time, we have done hundreds, if not thousands, of minimally invasive procedures for lung cancer. We have a proven record of excellence in this area and treating what is often a challenging and complex disease.”
