WITH THE development of modern techniques in anesthesia and thoracic surgery, it is now possible to resect large bullous lesions of the lung with relative safety.1-12 The correlation of preoperative and postoperative physiologic data with the clinical improvement following surgery remains unclear.2,9
The purpose of this report is to evaluate the clinical and physiologic data in 26 patients who underwent surgical treatment for bullous emphysema, and to attempt to clarify the indications for and the expected accomplishments of surgical therapy.
Materials and Methods
Twenty-six patients who underwent surgical treatment for bullous emphysema are the subject of this report. Eighteen patients were operated upon within the past two years. One of them had had a prior resection of bullae on the opposite side nine years previously. This patient, plus an additional eight patients, had surgery 3 to 11 years ago, and these nine patients constitute a long-term, postsurgical follow-up