Original article: general thoracicOpen lung biopsy as an outpatient procedure
Section snippets
Patients and methods
Between January 1997 and December 1999, 32 consecutive ambulatory, non-oxygen dependent patients with a clinical diagnosis of diffuse interstitial lung disease underwent outpatient open lung biopsy by one surgeon (WFB) at our institution. Patients who were oxygen dependent, hospitalized for acute illness, or suffering from focal (nondiffuse) lung disease were not considered for this biopsy approach. There was no upper age limiting patient selection. Patients were evaluated in the surgeon’s
Results
Thirty-two consecutive patients underwent open lung biopsy by one surgeon (WFB) as an outpatient procedure. During this period, the surgeon used the outpatient biopsy technique on all ambulatory non-oxygen dependent patients referred for biopsy of suspected diffuse interstitial lung disease. Mean age was 58 years with a range of 21 to 74 years. Preoperative forced expiratory volume in 1 second was 74.3% ± 7.0% of predicted and preoperative forced vital capacity was 82.9% ± 5.9% of predicted.
Comment
Diagnostic lung biopsy for diffuse interstitial lung disease can be accomplished using a limited thoracotomy or thoracoscopy approach 4, 5. Most recent investigation in this area of surgery has focused on the relative merits of these two operative approaches. Many studies have compared the two techniques, but most are hampered by their nonrandomized study design 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Most of these nonrandomized studies have suggested some advantage for the thoracoscopic approach 7, 8, 9, 10,
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