Wedge resection or enucleation in pulmonary hamartoma?

Background: Wedge resection and enucleation are the most commonly preferred surgical modalities forthe treatment of pulmonary hamartomas. There is a concern about the safety and efficacy of enucleation fora pulmonary hamartoma.Aim of the study: To compare wedge resection and enucleation for the surgical treatment of pulmonaryhamartomas.Material and methods: We retrospectively analyzed the data from patients who were surgically diagnosedwith pulmonary hamartoma between January 2014 and December 2019. We obtained data on clinical findings,radiological features, surgical modality, postoperative complications, and follow-up results from thehospital electronic database. We compared all these features in the patients who underwent wedge resectionwith those who received enucleation.Results: A total of 18 patients with pulmonary hamartoma were analyzed. The mean age of the patientswas 60.56±9.25 years and 10 (55.6%) were male. Twelve (66.7%) patients had no respiratory symptoms.Ten (55.6%) of the patients underwent wedge resection and 8 (54.4%) patients had enucleation. There wereno significant differences in age, gender, symptom distribution, prolonged air leakage, hospital stay length,intensive care unit stay length, mortality, or relapse rate between the patients with wedge resection and enucleation.Nodule size, calcification, metabolic activity, central or peripheral location, and lobar distributionwere also similar.Conclusions: We observed that there were no significant differences in the postoperative complications,hospital stay length, mortality or relapse between the patients with wedge resection and enucleation. Minimalparenchymal damage and resection should be the aim of surgical interventions for benign lung diseases.Therefore, we believe that enucleation should be the first choice for the surgical treatment pulmonary hamartomas.