I sat reflecting on the clinical course of Betty Hyde as I waited to interview her at a local Starbucks. Three weeks earlier, she had undergone an advanced surgical procedure to remove an entire lobe of lung tissue through the smallest of incisions in her chest wall.

I was surprised to see how briskly and energetically she walked in.

She has lung cancer. Or perhaps the better way of describing the problem is that she had lung cancer, according to her doctors.

Now the "had" descriptive is a dangerous word when describing any cancer and it will take some time before we really know whether or not the cancer returns. But for now I am amazed at how lively she presented herself.

I have seen the routine thoracotomy incision to remove lung tissue. I have seen the difficult recovery of patients exposed to this technique. Betty Hyde has too.

Hyde said, "I had a sister-in-law who had a large incision and it was awful looking and it was painful to her."

"Dr. Mayfield said he would make three small incisions," Hyde continued. "I was walking the next day and it was not painful."

"We removed the lung cancer through small band-aid incisions," said Dr. William Mayfield, a thoracic surgeon at Wellstar Health System.

The procedure is called VATS, or video-assisted thorascopics surgery. Mayfield is one of a small number of surgeons trained in this advanced technique.

I watched the procedure. I saw the camera as it was inserted into the lung cavity and I viewed the large video display as the lung was removed. I am a surgeon and what I saw was clearer than what can be seen with a large open incision.

If someone needs a lung procedure and is a candidate for VATS, why would one ever undergo the larger incision procedure?

"Ninety percent of lung surgery is done through very large thoracotomy incisions. An incision is made up to a foot long and we spread the ribs apart and work with retractors. This has been the way it had been done for 50 years," Mayfield said.

Dr. Ward Houck, one of Mayfield's partners, has recently published the world's largest series of VATS procedures and assisted in Hyde's surgery.

"Ninety-eight percent of our practice is done with this technique," Houck said.

"In most practices, it would be exactly the opposite. Ninety-eight percent would be done open (with the large thoracotomy incision)," said Mayfield.

The newer technique and smaller incision has been remarkable in a number of ways. According to Mayfield it dramatically reduces pain and results in an earlier return to work and return to function.

"Return to function" is doctor-speak for getting on with life without being tethered to a big hospital, hospital bed and a piece of IV tubing sticking inhospitably into a vein in one's arm.

Return to function is only three words, but those words can be a world of difference to an individual who just weeks earlier had been diagnosed with a routine chest x-ray as having lung cancer.

You see, Hyde had been a smoker, was a little hoarse and had the routine chest X-ray fully expecting to be gone from the office a little later with nothing more than a throat lozenge.

It did not quite work out that way. But what did happen is a tribute to superb technology applied at the right time and in the right way.

Betty Hyde's doctor, Dr. Stuart Simon, a Yale-trained pulmonary specialist at Georgia Lung Associates termed the context of her treatment as "incorporating technology into the art of medicine."

Simon says, "There truly is an art of medicine. You have to able to interpret the facts and apply them to specific patients."

These facts led to quick appropriate treatment and the art led to applying the appropriate treatment and diagnostic procedures at the right time.

Hyde comments, "I am happy to be well and I think I have done great and so does everyone else."

There truly is an art to medicine.