In the past five years 26 patients have had a thoracoplasty at the Kwangju Christian
Hospital. Twenty-two cases had an apicoly is in addition to thoracoplasty, (semb), 65
cases had a classical thoracoplasty, (Alexander), 6 patients had a Shede thoracoplasty,
and three patients had a thoracoplasty following the pulmonary resection. For purposes
of analysis the 6 Shede thoracoplasties are excluded. In the other 90 cases, 73 were
male and 17 were female. Half of the patients were under thirty, and no patient was
over sixty.
The operative mortality was 1.1%, only one patient having died. In 174 operations on
the 90 patients 18 wound infections occurred., for and overall infection rate of 10%.
Recently we have been draining the subscapular space with a catheter attached to
suction for 48 hours. In these cases there have been 19 first stage operations with only
one wound infection, (5%), and 17 second stage operations with no wound infections
Therefore we are hopeful that this catheter drainage method will decrease our wound
complication rate.
Only one patient was lost to follow-up. Eighty-six percent of the patients achieved
sputum conversion and are presumed arrested. In general about three out of four
patients who did covert to sputum negative, did so in the first three or four months
after operation. Two patients died with disease, (2.2%), and eight patients are as yet
sputum positive more than one year after operation. These are considered as probably
failures.
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