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Sign up for our free e-mail newsletter, HEALTHbeat.   Email address:     Incontinence Weight Loss Prostate Disease Vitamins and Minerals Aching Hands See All Titles Common Medical Conditions Wellness & Prevention Emotional Well Being & Mental Health Women’s Health Men’s Health Heart & Circulatory Health   contact us		What happens when the test is performed? Mediastinoscopy is done in an operating room. You wear a hospital gown and have an IV (intravenous) line placed in your arm so that you can receive medicines through it. This procedure is almost always done with general anesthesia, which puts you to sleep so you are unconscious during the procedure. General anesthesia is administered by an anesthesiologist, who asks you to breathe a mixture of gases through a mask. After the anesthetic takes effect, a tube is put down your throat to help you breathe. One reason you need this tube is that your head is tilted far back during the procedure. The tube keeps your throat safely open even while your neck is bending backwards. A very small incision (less than an inch long) is made above your breastbone (sternum). Carbon dioxide gas is allowed to flow into your chest through this opening, while your lungs are made to slightly collapse, giving your doctors a space within which to work. A tiny camera on a tube, called a mediastinoscope, is then inserted through the opening. Your doctor can see the work he or she is doing by watching a video screen. The doctor makes one or two other small incisions to allow additional instruments to reach into your chest. These incisions are usually made next to your sternum, between ribs. A wide variety of instruments are useful in mediastinoscopy. These include instruments that can clip away a lymph node and remove it through one of the small chest incisions. Other instruments can be used to stop bleeding blood vessels by using a small electrical current to seal them closed. At the end of your surgery, the instruments are removed, the lungs are reinflated, and the small incisions are stitched closed. The anesthesia is stopped so that you can wake up within a few minutes of your procedure, although you will remain drowsy for a while afterward.
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