Management of pulmonary bullous dystrophies

Bullous dystrophy or pulmonary emphysema bulla is a distension greater than 1cm of an airspace located beyond the terminal bronchioles. The aim of our study was to describe the indications and evaluate the results of surgery for bullous dystrophy. It was a retrospective, cross-sectional, longitudinal study from January 01, 2012 to August 30, 2020. The study included 84 patients operated for bullous dystrophy. Bullous dystrophy accounted for 1.6% of hospitalizations during the period. The mean age of the patients was 39.6 ± 23.4 years, with extremes of 0.16 years and 85 years. Male gender was predominant in 79.8% with a sex ratio of 3.94. Primary or idiopathic bullous emphysema accounted for 21.4%. Chest X-ray and CT scan were performed in almost all cases; and allowed to make the diagnosis. In our study, TPL was the most performed procedure (65.5%), axillary thoracotomy (3.6%), and video thoracoscopy (1.2%) was performed during a bilateral one-step thoracic approach.