Intraoperative Regional Cerebral Oxygenation During Pediatric Thoracoscopic Surgery: A Systematic Review

Ventilating a pediatric patient during thoracoscopy is challenging. Few studies have highlighted the impact of capnothorax in children by measuring regional cerebral oxygen saturation (rcSO₂) with near infrared spectroscopy. In this systematic review, we aimed to summarize the data from relevant studies and assess whether thoracoscopy in children is associated with intraoperative pathological cerebral desaturation. The authors systematically searched four databases for relevant studies on the measurement of rcSO₂ during pediatric thoracoscopic procedures. The primary outcome was the proportion of patients with pathological desaturation, that is, >20% decline in the intraoperative rcSO₂. Risk of bias among the included studies was estimated using the Newcastle-Ottawa scale. The systematic search resulted in 776 articles, of which 7 studies were included in the analysis. In total, 88 patients (99 procedures) with an age ranging from 0 days to 8.1 years were included. Of these, 43 (49%) patients were neonates. The included cohort had esophageal atresia and tracheoesophageal fistula (n = 26), long-gap esophageal atresia (n = 5), congenital diaphragmatic hernia (n = 14), and congenital pulmonary airway malformations and other conditions needing lung resection (n = 43). Of the total 99 procedures, pathological desaturation was noticed in 13 (13.1%, 95% confidence interval 7.2-21.4) of them. Upon quality assessment, most of the studies were weaker in the selection and comparability domains. In this review, pathological cerebral desaturation was noticed in 13.1% of the pediatric thoracoscopic procedures. However, due to limited methodological quality of the included studies, further randomized multicentric studies comparing rcSO₂ in open versus thoracoscopic surgeries are needed to derive definitive conclusions.