BACKGROUND Prolonged air leak after pleural decortication is one of the most frequent complications. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to compare the effects of prolonged air leak between the digital chest drainage (DCD) system and the classic drainage system in patients with empyema class IIB or III (American Thoracic Society classification) in pleural decortication patients. MATERIAL AND...

Sir, Drs Greenough and Morley' conclude that very little ventilator pressure is transmitted to the oesophageal balloon in paralysed babies because of low lung compliance, and support this by showing lack of transmission to chest drains inserted in 2 babies with pneumothorax. Although this fits well with their other observations, they did not say whether there was any intrapleural air remaining ...

An 83-year-old man was transferred to our medical center with bilateral pneumothoraces. A biopsy of a nonhealing scalp lesion was done 4 weeks previously, and the specimen showed high-grade angiosarcoma. During the subsequent staging evaluation a week later, he was found to have asymptomatic bilateral pneumothoraces and multiple pulmonary cysts that were not metabolically active on 18 F-fluorod...

Bilateral primary spontaneous pneumothorax (BPSP) is a rare condition, accounting for ∼1.6% of spontaneous pneumothoraces. Patients with primary spontaneous pneumothorax have typically low body weight. BPSP in overweight/obese patients is an exceptionally rare event. The present report describes a case of an otherwise-healthy 20-year-old male patient with BMI 29.8 kg/m(2) presented to our hospi...

We report a case of ipsilateral reexpansion pulmonary edema occurring after the insertion of a chest tube in a patient with spontaneous pneumothorax. The patient received supplemental oxygen via a non-rebreather face mask to compensate for hypoxemia. 24 hours after the acute event, the patient recovered completely without residual hypoxemia. Reexpansion pulmonary edema after the insertion of a ...

Elevated peak inspiratory airway pressure (PIP) can occur during general anesthesia and is usually easily rectified. In rare circumstances it can lead to potentially fatal conditions such as tension pneumothorax. We report on a 77-year-old male patient admitted for a cervical laminoplasty. The preoperative chest radiograph showed normal findings and there was no medical history of allergy or un...