[How long should a patient stay in the hospital after lung resection?]

To describe the hospital stay of patients undergoing lobectomy or pneumonectomy in comparison with reference data from the Spanish National Health Service.

Prospective study of all consecutive lobectomy or pneumonectomy cases from January 1998 through December 2000. Data collected prospectively were as follows: date of birth, main diagnosis, dates of admission and discharge, surgical procedure, complications and postoperative exitus. Data collected retrospectively included all information related to readmission over the 30 days following discharge. Reference data were obtained from the web page of the Spanish Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs.

Mean hospital stay for the 279 patients studied was 8.3 days (8.4 for 214 lobectomy patients and 7.7 for 65 pneumonectomy patients). For either of the procedures the 50 percentile was 7 days. The rate of readmission was 8.6%. The 83 patients with postoperative complications required a mean stay of 11.9 days (p < 0.001). The reference data for 1998 were 17.5 days for a lobectomy (n = 1,443) and 19.8 days (n = 693) for pneumonectomy.

The mean hospital stay of reference is far longer than that which we consider adequate for pulmonary resection.