Comparison of postoperative pulmonary complications and intraoperative safety in thoracoscopic surgery under non-intubated versus intubated anesthesia: a randomized, controlled, double-blind non-inferiority trial

Traditional anesthesia for video-assisted thoracoscopy (VATS) such as double-lumen tracheal intubation (DLT) and one-lung ventilation (OLV), may lead to post-operative pulmonary complications (PPCs). Non-intubation VATS (NIVATS) is an anesthetic technique that avoided DLT and OLV, maybe avoiding the PPCs. So we hypothesized that NIVATS would non-inferiority to intubation VATS (IVATS) in the risk of developing PPCs and some safety indicators.

This study is a randomised, controlled, double-blind, non-inferiority trial, 120 patients were randomly assigned to the NIVATS group and IVATS group according to 1:1. The primary outcome was the incidence of PPCs with a pre-defined non-inferiority margin of 10%. The second outcome was the safety indicators, including the incidence of cough/body movement, hypoxemia, malignant arrhythmia, regurgitation and aspiration, and transferring to endobronchial intubation intraoperatively (The malignant arrhythmia was defined as an arrhythmia that caused hemodynamic disturbances in a short period of time, resulting in persistent hypotension or even cardiac arrest in the patient).

There was no significant difference in demographic indicators such as gender and age between the two groups. The incidence of PPCs in the NIVATS group was non-inferior to that in the IVATS group (1.67% vs. 3.33%, absolute difference: − 1.67%; 95%CI − 7.25 to 3.91). In additionan, no significant differences were found between the two groups for the incidence of cough/body movement (10.00% vs. 11.67%, p = 0.77), the incidence of hypoxemia (25% vs. 18.33%, p = 0.38), the incidence of malignant arrhythmia (1.67% vs. 6.67%, p = 0.36), the incidence of regurgitation and aspiration (0% vs. 0%, p > 0.999) and the incidence of transferring to endobronchial intubation intraoperatively (0% vs. 0%, p > 0.999).

We conclude that when using the non-intubation anesthesia for VATS, the incidence of PPCs was not inferior to intubation anesthesia. Furthermore, NIVATS had little effect on perioperative safety.