Abstract

BRITO SOSA, Germán  and  VIVO NUNEZ, Juan Gualberto. Incidence of pneumothorax in "Julio Trigo" Hospital. Rev Cubana Cir [online]. 2012, vol.51, n.1, pp. 10-16. ISSN 0034-7493.

Objectives: to determine the behavior of pneumothorax as emergency in "Julio trigo" Hospital from 1995 to 2004. Methods: a cross-sectional, retrospective and descriptive study was conducted. The medical records from 555 patients with pneumothorax admitted in above mentioned hospital between 1995-2004. Universe included 555 patients diagnosed with pneumothorax, seen in our hospital during the above period. Results: the pneumothorax is more frequent in male sex (75.1 %) and in age groups between 21 and 40 years old (52 %). The 78 % of patients presenting with spontaneous pneumothorax are smokers and from the 43 non-smokers patients 37 of them have backgrounds of respiratory affections with predominance of emphysema, the bronchial asthma and bronchiectasis. The spontaneous pneumothorax were less frequent in 195 patients (35.1 %) related to those traumatic pneumothorax ones present in 360 patients (64.9 %) and from them, 127 had hemo-pneumothorax. There were 62 patients (11 %) with complications and the more frequent ones included: the persistence of this situation (4.7 %) and hypovolemic shock (3.4 %). Conclusions: the is a close relationship among the respiratory chronic diseases and the spontaneous pneumothorax. The relapsing spontaneous types are related to smoking, old age and chronic respiratory affections.

Keywords : pneumothorax.