Technical aspects of the anterior transmanubrial approach in thoracic inlet tumor surgery.

Surgical treatment of thoracic inlet tumors represents a challenge to the surgeon due to its location and anatomical elements contained in that region. Several surgical approaches have been proposed, each of them showing some advantages but drawbacks as well. In our opinion, the anterior transmanubrial approach described in 1997 is one of the most convenient. The objective of this paper is to describe and comment on some technical aspects of the procedure in order to aid surgeons who intend to perform this surgical approach. Moreover, we show our results in five patients and also comment on other approaches in this pathology.