We have performed a prospective study to assess the efficacy of suction drainage in 45 patients with primary spontaneous pneumothorax and 15 patients with secondary spontaneous pneumothorax, treated by closed chest tube drainage with underwater seal during the period Jan. 1990 to Dec. 1990 at the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovasular Surgery, Yeungnam Jniversity Hospital.
The patients w(-re divided randomly into two groups, 28 cases receiving suction and the other 32 cases no suction. The success rate was 82.1% for the former and 87.5% for the latter with the overall success rate of 85.0% and there was no significant difference in success rate between the two groups. According to the causes and the extent of pueumothorax, the difference between the success rates of the two groups was also not significant statistically.
But according to the duration of air leakage, suction group under 2 days showed a high success rate(46.4%) and the same group with 3-4 days, a relatively low success rate(21. 4%) compared with that of the former.
We conclude that the suction treatment is somewhat valuable in shortening the tubing time in patients with small amounts of air leakage, but it doesn´t seem to increase the success rate in all patients.
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