[Middle lobectomy for bronchiectasis: clinical case and review of the literature]

Over the past few years bronchiectasis, among the chronic lung diseases, has been the second most important after tuberculosis in terms of frequency and mortality. Although the incidence of the disease has been decreasing in recent years, the illness is currently of great surgical interest because of an upsurge of cases among people considered to be below the bread line. The authors present the clinical case and surgical treatment of a young adult with middle lobe bronchiectasis, with a 10-year primary IgG deficiency and severe bronchopneumonia requiring hospitalisation. Medical treatment, long regarded as the treatment of choice in this condition, has reduced the short-term morbidity of patients suffering from the disease, without affecting its ultimate mortality which is still very high today. The policy in the past to reserve surgery only for the most complicated cases or for patients not responding to medical treatment can now be considered obsolete, due to the reduced surgical risks (less than 1%) and to faster patient recovery. Further surgical indications are mono- or bilaterally located forms of the disease and failure to respond to medical treatment for more than 2 years. A review of the literature enables the authors to affirm that in the absence of randomised trials on the effectiveness of surgical vs medical treatment, it seems clear that surgical therapy is the best option, being curative and safe, with a high percentage of complete remission of disease and very low operative risks and mortality. It can therefore guarantee good quality of life, radically changing the prognosis which otherwise is fatal in 1/3 of patients suffering from this orphan disease.