Surgical Lung Biopsy for Diffuse Infiltrative Lung Disease

Lee, Jang Hoon; Lee, Jung Cheul; Kwon, Jin Tae

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The diffuse infiltrative lung disease requires surgical lung biopsy for its final diagnosis. We evaluated the effect of surgical lung biopsy for final diagnosis of duffuse interstitial lung disease and compared video assisted thoracoscopic lung biopsy (TLB) with open lung biopsy (OLB). MATERIAL AND METHOD: We evaluated the patients who underwent surgical lung biopsy from March 2000 from December 2005, retrospectively. We divide to two groups (OLB and TLB group) and compared them. RESULT: There were 36 patients and cough was the most common pre- operative symptom. Surgery time, anesthetic time, hospital stay, duration of chest tube indwelling, specimen volume and the rate of post-operative complication were not significantly different between two groups. Histologic diagnosis was confirmed in all cases. There was one post-operative death who had suffered from respiratory failure since pre-operative period.
CONCLUSION
Surgical lung biopsy is effective method in final diagnosis for diffuse infiltrative lung disease. Video assisted thoracoscopic lung biopsy is lesser invasive method than open lung biopsy and provide similar results, so it is basic diagnostic method of surgical lung biopsy.