抄録
Objectives To predict the prognosis by lung collapse rate of spontaneous pneumothorax detected during health checkups.
Design A cross-sectional study.
Setting and Participants Subjects consisted of 30 pneumothorax cases among a total of 837,979 people consulting our institute for health screening over a five-year period.
Measurement and Results Lung collapse rates were 1.9% to 19.2% for 30 pneumothorax cases. There was no significant difference between the mild group and moderate group in the men/women ratio, laterality, Brinkman index, respiratory symptom. However, the BMI of the moderate group was significantly lower than that of the mild group (p=0.004). The rate of “treatment required” in the moderate group was significantly higher than that in the mild group (p=0.001). There were no “treatment required” cases in the mild group. Minimum degree of lung collapse requiring treatment was 13.4%.
Conclusions It was found in this study that none of the cases need treatment of pneumothorax with a lung collapse rate less than 10%. However, considering the characteristics of pneumothorax as a disease, it seems difficult to reduce the judgment from “treatment required” to “observation” even when the lung collapse rate is less than 10%. Instead, we consider that the judgment “reexamination required” should be given to “mild pneumothorax”.
