Clinical application of near-infrared thoracoscope with indocyanine green in video-assisted thoracoscopic bullectomy

Failure to identify all the possible bullous lesions was considered an important reason for the higher recurrence rate after the VATS bullectomy. We applied the latest near-infrared (NIR) thoracoscope with indocyanine green (ICG) to detect bullous lesions for patients with spontaneous pneumothorax. Two male patients with spontaneous pneumothorax and poorly identified bullae intraoperatively were included in this pilot study. An NIR thoracoscope with two different doses of ICG injection (0.2 and 0.6 mg/kg) was used to detect bullous lesions during VATS bullectomy. Partial lung resections of the bullous lesions were performed under syncretic mode. Data was managed with ImageJ software. No procedure-related complications were observed. The fluorescent signal was detected in normal lung tissue 10.5 seconds (mean, 10–11 seconds) after the ICG bolus, and lasted up to 525 seconds (mean, 480–570 seconds). The bullous lesions showed an obviously decreased fluorescent densities comparing to adjacent normal tissue. At the dosage of 0.6 mg/kg, ICG emits sufficient fluorescence to demonstrate the precise border of bullae, with the max SBR of 6.32. All resected specimens were confirmed as bullous lesions microscopically. NIR thoracoscope with intravenous ICG is a safe, accurate and real-time method to detect bullous lesions of lung tissue difficult to be found under normal light in human subjects.