Indications for Surgical Intervention in “Spontaneous” Pneumothorax

The management of spontaneous pneumothorax.

“…To-day the pathology of the condition is well understood but there is no general agreement about therapy. In the literature, the treatment varies from the extremely conservative, with bed-rest alone in most cases (Vail, Alway, and England, 1960;Hyde, 1963), to early thoracotomy (MacQuigg, 1955;Watkins and Hering, 1961) or even bilateral thoracotomy (Baronofsky, Warden, Kaufman, Whatley, and Hanner, 1957). It is the purpose of this paper, by reviewing 242 patients, to assess the efficacy of surgical management as practised in Edinburgh.…”