Surgical versus non-surgical management for pleural empyema.

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest there is no statistically significant difference in mortality between primary surgical and non-surgical management of pleural empyema for all age groups. Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery may reduce length of hospital stay compared to thoracostomy drainage alone.There was insufficient evidence to assess the impact of fibrinolytic therapy.A number of common outcomes were reported in the included studies that were not directly examined in our primary and secondary outcomes. These included duration of chest tube drainage, duration of fever, analgesia requirement, and total cost of treatment. Future studies focusing on patient-centred outcomes, such as patient functional scores, and other clinically relevant outcomes, such as radiographic improvement, treatment failure rates, and amount of fluid drainage, are needed to inform clinical decisions. PMID: 28304084 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Cochrane Database Syst Rev Source Type: research