Abstract
Most studies of stenting in patients with benign tracheobronchial stenosis (TBS) are retrospective or perform prospective percentage analysis of complications.
Design: Prospective study of 23 patients (17 men), age 46.7 (±14.7) with benign TBS.
Aim: To establish prognostic factors for good therapeutic response.
Methods: Silicon stent (DUMON®-Stent,Novatech,France) was applied in all patients. Evaluation of TBS included: clinical (dyspnoea, stridor, cough, recurrent infections and comorbidity) and functional variables (FEV1, 6-MWD, fatigue assessed by Borg scale, grade of dyspnoea by MRC scale), bronchoscopy, spirometry and CT-scan. Therapeutic response after stenting is evaluated with functional variables and stent-related complications (migration, growth of granulations, obstruction from secretions, bacterial infections and colonization). The complications are divided into early (within the first month after stenting) and late (after the first month).
Results: Statistically significant difference was reached between level of fatigue and granulations as a late complication (p=0.043). Fatigue was the only functional variable significantly associated with late complications (p=0.030). Increase in level of fatigue with 1 point leads to 3.7-fold increase in the risk for late complication. For bacterial infections the correlation with fatigue was analogous and for the other early complications it was statistically significantly associated (p=0.040)
Conclusions: The study results suggest the need of bronchoscopic control in patients with level of fatigue between 5 and 9 points assessed by Borg scale for detection of early and late complications associated with stenting.
- Copyright ©ERS 2015