Role of videothoracoscopy in chest trauma.

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate videothoracoscopic procedures in the setting of chest trauma.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed our experience of videothoracoscopy in patients with either blunt trauma or penetrating thoracic injuries.

Results: Forty-three procedures involving 42 patients were performed between July 1990 and April 1996.

Video-assisted thoracoscopic treatment of spontaneous pneumothorax: technique and results of one hundred cases.

Objective: This article describes the technique and results for an initial series of 100 pneumothoraces treated by video-assisted thoracoscopy.

Methods: From May 1991 to November 1994, 97 patients (78 male and 19 female patients) aged 37.2 +/- 17 years (range 14 to 92 years) underwent video-assisted thoracoscopy for treatment of spontaneous pneumothorax (primary in 75 patients, secondary in 22 patients).

Should cavitated bronchopulmonary cancers be considered a separate entity?

Background: This study was designed to identify any clinical, histologic, and prognostic features specific to cavitated bronchopulmonary tumors.

Methods: A total of 353 patients with lung cancer were categorized in two groups on the basis of chest radiograph and computed tomographic findings: 35 patients with cavitated cancers (group I) and 318 patients with noncavitated neoplasms (group II). Cavitation was defined as the presence of air in the tumor at the time of diagnosis and before any treatment or aspiration biopsy.

[Results of surgical treatment of complicated paraesophageal hernias].

From January 1979 to May 1995, 18 patients (4 men, 14 women) with a mean age of 75.4 +/- 12.5 yr underwent surgery for a complicated paraesophageal hiatus hernia.

[Para-esophageal hernias. Apropos of 42 cases].

Between 1979 and May 1994, 42 patients (11 males, 31 females, mean age 72.8 +/- 12.4 years) underwent surgery for paraoesophageal hiatal hernia.