BackgroundSynchronous bilateral lung lesions are emerging as a common but tricky disease for surgical management. Whether one or two-stage surgery should be taken remains in debate. We retrospectively analysed 151 patients who underwent one and two-stage Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery (VATS) to investigate the safety and feasibility of the two surgical approaches.MethodsA total of 151 patients were included in the study. Propensity score matching was performed to minimize the baseline characteristics difference between one and two-stage groups. Clinical factors including in-hospital days after surgery, chest tube drainage days, types and severity of post-operative complications were compared between the two groups. Logistic univariate and multivariate analyses were used to find the risk factors for post-operative complications. Nomogram was built to select the low risk candidates for the one-stage VATS.ResultsAfter propensity score matching, 36 one-stage and 23 two-stage patients were enrolled. The age (p = 0.669), gender (p = 0.3655), smoking status (p = 0.5555), pre-operative comorbidity (p = 0.8162), surgical resection (p = 0.798) and lymph node dissection (p = 9036) were balanced between the two groups. There was no difference in post-surgery hospital days (8.67 +/- 2.68 versus 8.46 +/- 2.92, p = 0.7711) and chest tube retaining days (5.47 +/- 2.20 versus 5.46 +/- 1.95, p = 0.9772). Moreover, post-operative complications also showed no difference between one-stage and two-stage groups (p = 0.3627). Univariate and multivariate analysis revealed that advanced age (p = 0.0495), pre-surgical low haemoglobin (p = 0.045) and blood loss (p = 0.002) were risk factors for post-operative complications. Nomogram built with the three risk factors showed reasonable predictive value.ConclusionsOne-stage VATS for synchronous bilateral lung lesion patients was proved to be a safety procedure. Advanced age, pre-surgical low haemoglobin and blood loss may predict complications after surgery.