Postoperative Clinical Outcomes of Thoracoscopic Surgery under Local Anesthesia in Patients with Primary Spontaneous Pneumothorax

(1) Background: since the technologies of anesthesia and surgery were advanced, video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) under local anesthesia (LA) has been widely carried out and is considered a robust surgical technique to prevent the recurrence of pneumothorax in patients with recurrent primary spontaneous pneumothorax (PSP). In this study, postoperative clinical outcomes were compared to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of VATS under LA compared with general anesthesia (GA) in patients with PSP. (2) Methods: 255 patients underwent wedge resection underwent VATS for PSP in our hospital from January 2014 to June 2019. Of them, 30 patients underwent the operation under LA and the others underwent the operation under GA. Except for the anesthesia method, the same surgical technique was adopted for all patients. All medical records were retrospectively reviewed. (3) Results: the total operation time and total hospital days were relatively shorter, post-chest tube drainage was significantly shorter (0.04), and visual analog scale (VAS) scores in the outpatient clinic were significantly lower in the LA group than in the GA group (p = 0.01). The incidence of postoperative recurrence after discharge in the LA group (3.3%) was also lower than in the GA group (18.67%) (p = 0.001). In the LA group, there were no cases of conversion to intubation. (4) Conclusions: our results showed relatively better clinical outcomes in VATS under LA with sedation than under GA in the treatment of PSP. Hence, LA with sedation can be considered as a robust anesthetic technique for VATS and as applicable in the surgical treatment of PSP.

Automated summary

The study demonstrates that video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) under local anesthesia shows better clinical outcomes and lower postoperative recurrence rates compared to general anesthesia in patients with primary spontaneous pneumothorax (PSP).