Intraoperative techniques to prevent air leaks

Dynamic sealing of lung air leaks by the transplantation of tissue engineered cell sheets

“…Additionally, the material should be effective, easily manipulated, and approvable by regulatory agencies, such as the FDA [2]. Autologous skin fibroblasts therefore provide several key advantages that seemingly allow for future clinical applications.…”

“…Normally, the raw surfaces contact the parietal pleura, adhering to and sealing the defects. However in many cases, these air leaks fail to resolve during the expected length of time, thereby severely affecting the patient's postoperative quality of life [2]. Due to the inevitability of these situations, various surgical techniques such as suturing, stapling and electrocautery have been applied to resolve these cases intraoperatively [3].…”

Mechanical Ventilation and Air Leaks After Lung Biopsy for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

“…We assessed several of these previously determined risk factors (age, gender, smoking, concurrent infection, diabetes) and found no significant correlation with air leak risk. Several operative techniques, such as buttressing the staple line, glues and sealants, and pleural tents, as well as postoperative chest tube management have been explored as solutions to prevent or control air leaks, with variable success [11,[14][15][16][17][18][19]. During the time period of our study, the surgical stapler at our institution was changed to a disposable device that had better staple formation on thicker tissue and placed an additional row of staples to secure the lung.…”

Natural air leak test without submergence for spontaneous pneumothorax

“…The submersion method, which is the most popular way of screening for air leaks [3], requires that the lung parenchyma be held to identify the leak point. Furthermore, most procedures are performed in a limited space by VATS.…”