Pulmonary Resection in the Treatment of Tuberculosis

¹ The Middle Tennessee Tuberculosis Hospital and the Department of Surgery, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

The experience with 268 consecutive pulmonary resections for proved pulmonary tuberculosis at the Middle Tennessee Tuberculosis Hospital has been presented. They were performed on 252 patients. There were 11 operative deaths (4 per cent), the majority of which occurred in the elderly patients with extensive disease and in whom extensive resections were performed.

Major postoperative complications occurred in 47 (17 per cent). Bronchopleural fistula occurred in 18 (7 per cent). Segmental resection was most commonly complicated by bronchopleural fistula (15 per cent), whereas, in the other types of resection bronchopleural fistula occurred in 4 per cent of patients.

Pyrazinamide therapy during the operative period proved effective in the prevention of tuberculous complications.

In the follow-up period, only four patients died of tuberculosis and only two have changed from inactive to active tuberculosis status. At the end of the two-year follow-up period, 83 per cent of the cases had returned to full and active life.