VIDEO-ASSISTED THORACOSCOPIC SURGERY WITHOUT CHEST DRAIN PLACEMENT

Placement of chest drain following thoracoscopic procedures has been the gold standard. Nevertheless, a drainless approach may be safe and feasible in selected patients and procedures. In this study we aim to report our clinical experience after drainless video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery.

We retrospectively analyzed data of all subjects submitted to drainless video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery at our centre between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019. The preoperative clinical and surgical data and the immediate postoperative data were retrospectively evaluated through the consultation of the clinical processes and the computer registry system. We used descriptive statistics: mean or median, according to data distribution, and absolute or relative frequencies.

We included 161 patients, mean age of 31 years (min:15; max:78). We analyzed data from patients submitted to: thoracic sympathectomy(67.1%), wedge resection, for lung biopsy, metastasis or small nodules resection (21.7%), mediastinal cysts removal (6.2%), pleural lesions resection (3.7%) and emphysematous bullae resection (1.2%). The average length of stay was 1 day. Residual pneumothorax was noted in 15 patients (9.3%). Postoperative pleural drain placement due to pneumothorax occur in 4 patients (2.5%). There was no intra-hospitalar mortality.

Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery without postoperative chest drain seems to be valid and safe according to our results.