A greater quality of clinical evidence is needed

The article by Shen and colleagues (1) published in the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery tries to resolve one of the most controversial questions in the thoracic surgical field nowadays: does single-port video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (SP-VATS) offer any advantages over multiport video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (MP-VATS) lobectomy? The authors compare these two approaches for lobectomy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. To do that, they have carefully designed and conducted a case-control study with a propensity-matched analysis to evaluate safety and efficacy of SP-VATS lobectomy and compare the perioperative outcomes between SP and MP-VATS lobectomies for NSCLCs.