A Review of Our Clinical Experience: 107 Spontaneus Pneumothorax Cases

Abstract

Aim Pneumothorax is the common and life threatening problem of thoracic surgery, needs urgent intervention. In this study, spontaneous pneumothorax (SP) cases were divided into two groups and evaluated retrospectively according to age, sex, diagnostic methods, treatments, and results. Material and Methods Between June 2003 and May 2006, 107 patients with SP were enrolled into our study. There were 44 (41.13%) primary spontaneous pneumothorax (PSP) and 74 (58.87%) secondary spontaneous pneumothorax (SSP) patients. Age, gender, underlying lung disease, smoking history, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment type, surgical indication, morbidity, recurrence, mortality, and hospital stay of the patients were reviewed. Results 77 patients (71.96 %) were male and 30 patients (28.04 %) were female and their mean age was 45.7 +/- 19.1 years. Chronic obstructive lung disease (COLD) was the most common (39.68%) cause detected in the cases with secondary spontaneous pneumothorax. In twenty (18.695%) patients recurrence was observed and sixteen (14.95 %) of these patients underwent surgery. Whereas 49 (% 45.79) patients were managed by tube thoracostomy, 21(19.62%) patients were managed by tube thoracostomy+surgery and 19 (17.75%) patients were managed by tube thoracostomy+ pleurodesis. Operative indications were prolonged air leak and bullae + recurrence. Hospital mortality was 1.86%. The mean postoperative hospitalization time of the patients was 9.1 +/- 3.5 days. Conclusions Spontaneous pneumothorax is a pathology with low mortality and curable disease when diagnosed and treated in time. The primary treatment modality for spontaneus pneumothorax is conservative treatment or the thoracotomy depending on the degree of pneumothorax. Surgical procedures can be applied safely, with low recurrence rate, when the tube thoracostomy remains unsuccessful.