Thoracoscopic removal of middle mediastinal schwannoma originating from recurrent nerve.

Schwannomas of the left recurrent nerve are rare and there is no agreement on how to manage them without causing recurrent nerve dysfunction. We present a 63-year-old male with unspecific clinical symptoms in whom a middle mediastinal mass with a diameter of 5 cm was found incidentally. At thoracoscopic surgery,we found that the encapsulated tumor originated from left recurrent nerve and we performed tumor enucleation without sacrificing the recurrent nerve. The patient did experience postoperative hoarseness and vocal cord paralysis even though we preserved the recurrent nerve. To our knowledge, thoracoscopic removal of a left recurrent nerve schwannoma has not been reported in the literature before.