Introduction:

Pneumothorax, the presence of air in the pleural space, causes greater or lesser collapse of the lung with the consequent repercussion on the patient's respiratory mechanics and hemodynamics.

Objective:

To characterize patients with pneumothorax attended by the general surgery service in a hospital of the second level of health care in Cuba.

Methods:

A retrospective, descriptive and observational study was carried out on a sample selected by nonprobability intentional sampling of 100 patients treated for pneumothorax at Hospital Provincial Clínico Quirúrgico Universitario Arnaldo Milián Castro, of Villa Clara (years 2018-2022), to be studied according to age, sex, symptoms, imaging, treatment and complications, among other variables.

Results:

The mean age was 51.79 years, with a standard deviation of ± 20.19 years, therefore, there was a predominance of patients with 60 years or more (39 %), history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (17 %), nontraumatic cause of pneumothorax (68 %), also being dyspnea (91 %) the predominant symptom, lung collapse between 20 - 40 % (59 %) and abdominal ultrasound dedicated to trauma positive only in 2 % of the sample.

Conclusions:

In the carried-out characterization, the most frequent pneumothorax was of nontraumatic cause and affected middle-aged older adults, male with a history of chronic obstructive disease, being dyspnea the main symptom and presenting moderate pulmonary collapse in most cases, who did not undergo tomography, but receiving conventional medical-surgical treatment and whose most frequent complication was the persistence of pneumothorax.

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