Akhtar-Danseh GG, Akhtar-Danesh N, Finley C., et al. - In patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), researchers sought to determine the factors linked with minimally invasive surgery (MIS) uptake and determined its impact on survival. In the Canadian province of Ontario, surgical resection was performed in 8,988 patients with early stage NSCLC (stage I/II) from 2007 to 2017; of these, 53.6% had MIS. Year of diagnosis was noted to be linked with MIS uptake; patients in later years had a greater likelihood of having MIS. A significant predictive value of rurality for MIS was observed, though there appeared no predictive value of distance from the nearest regional cancer center for MIS utilization. Relative to patients with stage I disease, those with stage II disease received MIS less often. A significantly higher 5-year survival was observed in correlation with undertaking MIS vs open resection for stage I and II disease. The greatest 5-year survival benefit from MIS was evident in patients > 70 years. These results support the utility of MIS in the treatment of lung cancer and challenge the notion that, with MIS, oncologic outcomes are compromised, as there was substantial long-term survival benefit in patients undergoing MIS for early stage NSCLC.