Schmid S, et al. - Previous data suggest a survival benefit in well-selected patients with extrathoracic sarcoma after pulmonary metastasectomy. Researchers, herein, report their experience with laser-assisted surgery (LAS) in patients who underwent pulmonary metastasectomy at their clinic. Findings showed that compared to treatment by other techniques, LAS enabled removal of a significantly higher number of metastases while affording similar long-term outcomes. Expectably, with either surgical method, high recurrence rates were noted in metastasized sarcoma patients.

• Researchers extracted data from a prospectively maintained institutional database and identified a total of 83 patients who underwent pulmonary metastasectomy at their clinic in the last 11 years.

• A total of 106 operations were analyzed, of which LAS was performed in 46 and conventional resection in 60 cases.
• In the LAS group vs conventional group, significantly more metastases were resected [median, interquartile range (IQR): 6.5 (2.0–11.0) vs 1.0 (1.0–3.5); P<0.0001].
• Despite this difference, both groups showed similar number of tumor recurrences [64% tumor recurrences in the LAS group and 58% in the conventional group, odds ratio (OR) =1.3, P=0.6].
• Additionally, findings demonstrated that overall survival (OS) was comparable with a median survival of 77.6 and 29.0 months and 2- and 5-year survival rates of 71% and 63% as well as 53% and 36% in the respective cohorts [hazard ratio (HR) =0.74, P=0.43].