DEATHS AND COMPLICATIONS ASSOCIATED WITH TRANSBRONCHIAL LUNG-BIOPSY

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A questionnaire requesting information about complications resulting from transbronchial lung biopsy was sent to 178 directors of respiratory disease training programs in the USA and Canada. Questionnaires (96, 54%) were returned, listing 5450 transbronchial lung biopsy procedures; 13 deaths were directly or temporally related to the procedure. Nine patients died from hemorrhage; 8 of these had underlying diseases or were receiving drugs known to affect hemostasis. One also had pulmonary hypertension. One patient died from a tension pneumothorax that rapidly progressed > 2 h after the procedure. Analysis of the exact data, which were available for 2628 procedures, indicated that pneumothorax, hemorrhage exceeding 50 ml and death occurred in 5.5, 1.3 and 0.20% of procedures, respectively.

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit: