Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2007;32:183-184. doi:10.1016/j.ejcts.2007.03.033
Copyright © 2007, European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Reply to Ismail
Sunghyuk Choi*
Department of Emergency Medicine, College of Medicine, Korea University Guro Hospital, 80 Guro 2-Dong, Guro-Gu, Seoul 152-703, South Korea
Received 22 March 2007;
accepted 23 March 2007.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 2 818 6286; fax: +82 2 818 6284. (Email: kuedchoi{at}korea.ac.kr).
Key Words: Pneumothorax • Thoracostomy • Emergencies
Thank you for your interest about my manuscript ‘Can spontaneous pneumothorax patients be treated by ambulatory care management?’. And we described our reply to your question as below [1]:
- 1. The comparison of the price between the 8 Fr catheter and Heimlich valve group (20 cases) and the closed thoracostomy group (42 cases) had been made between the patient groups which were successful in treatment, therefore the result of the comparison is same as shown in Table 2 [2].
- 2. I agree with your opinion. This matter is explained in the Limitation section of our manuscript.
However, the success rate in case where a needle was inserted into the fifth intercostals space was 53%, which is much lower than the success rate of the closed thoracostomy method (87%).
- 3. Our institute recommends hospital treatment for those patients with spontaneous pneumothorax, where there is insertion of the closed thoracostomy tube; which requires a water seal system, so we rarely recommend ambulatory treatment.
- 4. I agree with your opinion. This matter has been explained in the Discussion section of our manuscript.
- 5. We applied 6 months for assessment of the recurrence rate in our research as it is generally used for assessment for the recurrence rate. We consider that any pneumothorax observed after 6 months should be diagnosed as a new outbreak.
References
- Ismail MF. Letter to the Editor. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2007;32:183.
- Choi SH, Lee SW, Hong YS, Kim SJ, Moon JD, Moon SW. Can spontaneous pneumothorax patients be treated by ambulatory care management?. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2007;31(3):491-495.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
