Fig. 2

Intraoperative position of the patients and the thoracoscopic and laparoscopic ports. VATS in the left-sided half-lateral decubitus position; three 2-cm thoracic ports were created in the seventh, sixth, and eighth intercostal spaces on the anterior, middle, and posterior axillary lines, respectively. A thoracoscope was inserted in the middle axillary line and the other two ports were used to expand the operative fields. One skin incision was made to the right side of the navel, and a laparoscope was inserted into the port (blue round) because a 5-cm longitudinal incision had been made 17 cm cranially from the pubic bone and two lateral fingers to the left of the navel for the placement of the PD catheter (black vertical line). In cases without bubbles, we added an additional laparoscopic port under the right hypochondrium (red horizontal line) to carefully observe the diaphragm