[Technology on Partial Resection and Segmentectomy for Early-stage Lung Cancer].

: Recently, lung cancer patients who cannot undergo lobectomy because of impaired pulmonary function, co-morbidity, and/or advanced age are increasing. And patients whose lung cancer is small in size, peripherally located, and assumed to be N0 disease are also increasing. Therefore, we have a greater opportunity to perform sublobar lung resection for these patients. For sublobar resection, several surgical technologies have been developed. Virtual-assisted lung mapping (VAL-MAP) is bronchoscopic multiple dye-marking technique under support of 3-dimensional virtual images to provide geometric information on the lung surface. This technic is effective to show the location of hardly palpable small lung cancer for thoracoscopic partial lung resection and to visualize the intersegmental / intersubsegmental planes for segmentectomy. Selective segmental inflation technic is to inflate the segment which includes lung cancer in order to make an intersegmental plane, so-called inflation-deflation line, to be cut. Using this technic, we can recognize the real margin from the tumor edge to the resected plane under thoracoscopic approach.