[Surgical pulmonary biopsy under local anesthesia and its results (based on 93 cases)]

The authors report 93 observations during which OCB were performed under local anesthesia. They insist on the validity of the method which can be used on fragile patients or on those with respiratory insufficiency for whom an exploring thoracotomy would be contra-indicated. Incidents were minor and momentary (pneumothorax, pleural reaction). It is mostly in diffuse lesions of miliary and fibrotic nature that this technique was used to identify various lesions : silicosis, sarcoidosis, tuberculosis, histiocytosis, etc... In a third of the cases, lesions were not specific and could not be definitely identified in parieto-alveolar fibrosis or inflammatory alveolitis.