Review Article A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis to Assess Patient-Reported Outcomes after Lung Cancer Surgery

Copyright © 2013 Sayf Gazala et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The main objective of this review was to systematically review, assess, and report on the studies that have assessed health related quality of life (HRQOL) afterVATS and thoracotomy for resection of lung cancer.Weperformed a systematic reviewof six databases. TheDowns and Black tool was used to assess the risk of bias. Five studies were included. In general, patients undergoing VATS have a better HRQOL when compared to thoracotomy; however, there was a high risk of bias in the included studies. The consistent use of a lung cancer specific questionnaire for measuring HRQOL after surgery is encouraged. 1