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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Med.
Sec. Pulmonary Medicine
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1484327
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in the Management of Lung Cancer: From the Bench to the Bedside and Back View all 6 articles

The safety and efficacy of additional chest tube placement in patients with prolonged air leaks after pulmonary resection: A propensity score-matched analysis

Provisionally accepted
Qingwang Hua Qingwang Hua Suyue Liu Suyue Liu *Lu Shen Lu Shen *Zhenhua Yang Zhenhua Yang *Haibo Shen Haibo Shen *
  • Department of Thoracic Surgery, Ningbo No.2 Hospital, Ningbo, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study evaluates the symptomatic management of prolonged pleural air leaks following pulmonary resection, assesses the efficacy and safety of chest tube placement, and introduces experiences with high-positioned chest tube insertion.We retrospectively reviewed 84 patients with prolonged pleural air leaks after lung surgery at Ningbo NO.2 Hospital from January 2022 to December 2023. These patients were divided into a conservative treatment group (Group A, n=64) and a chest tube placement group (Group B, n=20). The propensity score matching method was applied to balance confounders between the two groups, resulting in 12 matched pairs. The study compared the time to chest tube removal, average hospital stays time, postoperative drainage volume, and facial visual analog pain score between the two groups.The average hospital stays and chest tube removal time of patients in group B were significantly lower than those of patients in group A (8.00±1.12 vs 9.75±1.60 days, P=0.003, 6.92±1.08 vs 8.58±1.67 days, P=0.005, respectively). However, the mean facial visual analog pain score in group B was higher than that in group A (1.58±0.58 vs 1.00±0.01, P=0.020). There were no significant differences between the two groups in terms of postoperative drainage volume.For patients with prolonged air leaks, additional chest tube placement postoperatively significantly reduces both hospitals stay duration and chest tube indwelling time compared to conservative treatment. This method may be a potential treatment measure for prolonged air leak in selected patients.

    Keywords: Air leak, Chest drains, postoperative, Pulmonary surgery, tube

    Received: 21 Aug 2024; Accepted: 23 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Hua, Liu, Shen, Yang and Shen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Suyue Liu, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Ningbo No.2 Hospital, Ningbo, China
    Lu Shen, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Ningbo No.2 Hospital, Ningbo, China
    Zhenhua Yang, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Ningbo No.2 Hospital, Ningbo, China
    Haibo Shen, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Ningbo No.2 Hospital, Ningbo, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.