Surgical intervention is safe, feasible, and effective in tubercular tracheobronchial stenosis

Posttubercular tracheobronchial stenosis is a troublesome sequela of tracheobronchial tuberculosis. Surgical resection is the treatment of choice when repeated bronchoscopic dilatations fail. Herein, we aim to present our surgical experience in the management of this problem and also to evaluate factors affecting the surgical outcomes.

This is a retrospective analysis of a prospectively maintained database at a dedicated thoracic surgical unit in New Delhi, India, over 8 years. An analysis of demographic characteristics, perioperative variables including complications were carried out. The occurrence of postoperative complications, and/or hospital stay of >7 days was considered as "poor" surgical outcomes. Various parameters were analyzed to assess the factors predicting surgical outcomes.

A total of 20 patients were surgically managed in the study period. Two patients had tracheal stenosis. The left main bronchus was involved in 16 patients. In these 16 cases, 12 cases underwent lung preserving surgery (bronchial sleeve resection and sleeve lobectomy) and rest of 4 cases required pneumonectomy. All postoperative complications occurred in 5 (25%) patients. Prolonged air leak was the most common postoperative complication. On univariate analysis, surgical outcomes were poor in patients who had longer duration of symptoms (P = 0.03) and with >2 episodes of preoperative balloon dilatations (<0.001). On multivariate analysis, "total number of dilatations <4 times," emerged as a significant predictive factor for lung preservation surgery.

Surgical intervention is safe, feasible, and effective in tubercular tracheobronchial stenoses which fail to respond to bronchoscopic interventions. Early referral for surgery favors lung preservation.