Abstract
The role of minimal invasive surgery in management of chest trauma should not be underestimated. The amount of data for video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) management in chest-trauma patient is rare. Nevertheless the on-going acceptance and use of VATS for major thoracic resections has led to advanced techniques for management of major bleedings in the elective-surgery-patient. VATS as a procedure for pleural space management in the non-critical, non-massive-transfusion patients can be of great assistance. Its value in persistent non-major-vessel-bleeding hemothorax in terms of pleural space debridement is unchallenged. In some cases VATS is considered to be related to lower ARDS-rates in comparison to open thoracotomy patients, whereby an obvious bias for the non-massive-injury-patients exist. Jin et al. could prove a significant advantage for stable thoracic trauma patients treated through VATS in a randomised trial vs. open thoracotomy.