Abstract:
Purpose Traumatic pulmonary pseudocysts (TPPs) are
rare complications of chest trauma. The aim of this retrospective
study was to report the clinical presentations,
diagnosis, complications and treatment for a series of TPPs
at a hospital in Turkey.
Methods The charts of 996 patients who were admitted
for thoracic trauma between 1999 and 2012 were retrospectively
reviewed. Fifty-two patients had TPPs, and the
data collected for these individuals were sex, age, and type
of trauma (blunt and/or penetrating). Univariate analysis of
categorical data was performed using Pearson’s Chi square
test. Results for continuous variables were statistically
compared using the Mann–Whitney U test.
Results The patients were 42 males and 10 females aged
12–72 years (mean age 33.1 years). Forty-one had blunt
trauma and 11 had penetrating trauma. There was no significant
difference between the proportion of blunt trauma
patients who developed TPP (41/761, 5.3 %) and the proportion
of penetrating trauma patients who developed TPP
(11/235, 4.6 %) (p[0.05). All 42 patients had pulmonary
contusion. Only 10 patients (19.2 %) had TPP identified on
their chest X-ray, and thoracic computed tomography
revealed TPP clearly in all these cases. Forty-two patients
(80.7 %) were diagnosed with TPP on day 1 post-trauma.
The hospital stays ranged from 2 to 35 days for the patients
with blunt-trauma, and from 4 to 15 days for those with
penetrating trauma (means 8.8 and 8.0 days, respectively;
p[0.05). Only one patient required thoracotomy for a
pseudocyst that did not resolve and became progressively
enlarged. This TPP was resected at 6 months post-trauma.
One patient died on day 9 post-trauma due to multiple
organ failure. The other 40 pseudocysts resolved spontaneously
within 1–5 months.
Conclusions Traumatic pulmonary pseudocysts are pulmonary
lesions that occur after either blunt or penetrating
trauma and tend to be overlooked. Most of these lesions are
self-limiting, benign lesion.
