Has there been a paradigm shift in mediastinal surgery from open to minimally invasive, and from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to positron emission tomography–computerized tomography (PET–CT) in the last decade?

Objective The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of diagnostic and surgical developments in the complete resection of the mediastinal masses. Methods Of 313 patients, 236 underwent therapeutic or diagnostic complete resections. We analyzed age, gender, diagnostic interventions, neoadjuvant treatment, type of surgical intervention (sternotomy, video-assisted thoracic surgery [VATS], thoracotomy), pathology, duration of hospital stay, complications, mortality, and associated diseases. Patients were divided into two groups according to the period of operation: group A included patients who were operated on between January 2002 and January 2007; group B included patients who were operated on between January 2007 and January 2012. Results Resection with VATS increased significantly after 2007, from 17.7 to 35 % ( p = 0.03). The rate of complications increased after 2007 ( p = 0.03), which was apparent in non-VATS patients ( p = 0.03). The use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) decreased from 29 to 15.5 % ( p = 0.02) and positron emission tomography (PET)–computed tomography (CT) use increased from 1.6 to 25.2 % ( p