Introduction:

Diffuse interstitial lung disease makes up a heterogeneous group of lesions with several common characteristics, among which inflammation and scarring of the organ stand out. Generally, obtaining parenchymal tissue is required for definitive diagnosis.

Objectives:

To describe the outcomes of using the method of minithoracotomy or video-assisted thoracic surgery to obtain tissue samples for histopathological study.

Methods:

An observational, longitudinal and prospective study was carried out with 52 consecutive patients with a diagnosis of diffuse interstitial lung disease. Tissue samples obtained by video-assisted thoracic surgery or mini-thoracotomy were taken at Hermanos Ameijeiras Clinical-Surgical Hospital, between 2001 and 2018. The age and sex of the patients, the surgical technique used, and complications and mortality were studied. The results are presented in tables, in absolute and relative numbers.

Results:

The female sex predominated (59.6%). The most widely used surgical technique was minithoracotomy (75.0%) in patients between 41-50 years (15 patients). The most frequent condition was pulmonary fibrosis, accounting for 78.8%. In two patients who underwent video-assisted thoracic surgery, it was not possible to obtain any tissue for biopsy (15.4%). There were two complications in patients operated on by minithoracotomy.

Conclusions:

Video-assisted thoracic surgery allows wide exploration of the lung surface, but open biopsy can be just as effective in obtaining lung tissue samples, with a minimum percentage of complications and a low mortality rate.

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