Review of Results and Complications of Thoracoscopy in Patients with Unknown Pleural Effusion in Besat Hospital Hamdadan during 2013-2016 Period

Introduction & Unknown pleural effusion etiology contain patients whose came with these symptoms (cough, dyspnea) and in evaluation Pleural Effusion TB smear was negative & it was exudative with lymphocyte predominant. Present study was done to assess the results and complications of single port thoracoscopy.
In a descriptive study, 45 patients with pleural effusion of unknown origin (smear-negative tuberculosis and exudative with preferred lymphocyte cell) that had been admitted to Hamedan Besat Hospital in the years 2012 to 2015, were included the study by case review method. The patients were assessed by a surgeon with thoracoscopic method and placed under at least 3 pleural biopsy. Age and gender of patients, the need for medical treatment or open surgery, developing complications related and non-related with thoracoscopy, duration of hospital stay and pathological results of pleural tissue in terms of malignancy or benignity were recorded in a pre-designed checklists. The data collected were analyzed by statistical software STATA, and descriptive statistics and t-test and chi-square tests were used for evaluating the significance of relationships, if needed. Significance level of tests was considered less than 0.05.
In this study 45 patients was evaluated and 28 cases (62%) was male. The mean age of the studied patients was 56.2±17.6 years. In 9 cases (20%) complications was happen but unrelated to thoracoscopy. In 5 cases (11%) needs to open surgery. In 20 cases (44.5%) needs to medical treatment. Pathologic results in 30 cases (66.6%) was benign & in 15 cases (33.3%) was malignant. The average age of patients with benign pathology (18.8 ± 52.8 years) and malignant pathology (12.9 ± 63 years) did not differ significantly (P = 0.096). There was no significant difference for comparing benign and malignant pathology in the group of female sex (11 benign patients and 6 malignant patients) and male (19 benign patients and 9 malignant patients) (P = 0.828).
Based on the results of this study, single port thoracoscopy is a minimally invasive surgical procedure that allows diagnostic and therapeutic procedures at the same time, is a suitable method and is recommended. Complementary studies with larger sample sizes and enabling comparison with other methods such as open surgery in terms of efficacy and side effects are recommended.