Abstract: Objectives To show the advantage of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery(VATS)compared with routine exploratory thoracotomy in diagnosis and therapy of indefinite pulmonary solitary nodule(SPN).Methods A retrospective study was performed on 149 cases that were treated in this hospital.All of the patients were without pathologically diagnosed SPN before undergoing thoracoscopy or thoracotomy.Results All patients received lung biopsies and were diagnosed pathologically.There were significant differences between VATS and routine thoracotomy in the average time of analgesis,the duration of chest tube drainage,the total volume of chest tube drainage,the days of hospitalization after operation,the operation minutes of lung lobectomy and the cost of hospitalization.The volume of blood in operation and the operation minutes of wedge resection of lung had no significant difference between the two groups.Conclusions VATS is effective and should be promoted to further apply on the patients with SPN.

Key words: Solitary pulmonary nodule, Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, Opration