[Role of surgical treatment in thoracic empyema with bronchopleural and/or thoracic empyema]

Sixty-nine patients with thoracic empyema treated surgically were experienced from May, 1978 through December, 1990. Thirty-nine cases had bronchopleural and/or thoracic fistula. Thirty-two patients were associated with pulmonary tuberculosis, of whom fourteen had tuberculous empyema and eighteen were sequelae of pulmonary tuberculosis or tuberculous pleurisy. The remainder were postoperative, postpneumonic, and posttraumatic empyemas. Of fourteen patients who developed postoperative bronchopleural fistula, there were ten patients who had lobectomy or pneumonectomy for lung cancers. Omental pedicle flap method, in which empyema space was filled with the omentum and pedicled muscle flap, was performed on 19 patients with bronchopleural or thoracic fistula or both. Fifteen patients were cured successfully by single-stage procedure, though there was one operative death due to aspiration pneumonia, and two recurrences which were treated by muscle plombages. There was another patient who had multiple surgical procedures in the past resulting in partial recurrences, but the fistula of this patient subsequently closed without reoperation. Postoperative decrease of %VC, FEV1.0/PVC were minimal. Treatment of long standing bronchopleural fistula is a difficult problem, and our omental pedicle flap method is relatively simple and safe which can be most suitably applied to those patients in whom other procedures have failed and to those with poor pulmonary functions.