Hi guys. My son is n the hospital with his second spontaneous pneumothorax n the left side. He woke up with chest pain and tightness. After a chest x Ray at a satellite place he was taken by ambulance to his hospital. It is over 50 percent collapsed. He will be having surgery in the am that will include exploratory, putting in a chest tube, Pleuredesis, and possible removal of some piece of the lung. Just wondering if anyone had experience with this procedure? If so does it add much increase of pain when compared to just having a chest tube? That was painful enough for him. The hope is he will not have any more pneumthorax's. This will be his fourth pneumothorax all together. We were to leave for vacation in a month and unfortunately will probably have to postpone because of flying. He is super upset. Thanks so much, jshet22
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Pleuredesis
- Thread starter Jshet22
- Start date
Hi - I had a chemical pleurodesis done 4 years ago following a lung collapse. I was 24 at the time. It was my first/only lung collapse, also spontaneous, and very collapsed. They tried chest tubes for about 10 days before deciding to do the procedure, as my lung was just not "re-sticking" as it needed to. I got a second opinion during this time from another lung surgeon outside my CF clinic, at the recommendation of my CF doc, who agreed this was the right thing to do. IR did the actual procedure at my CF hospital.
I have not had any lung collapses since then, so the procedure seems to have done the trick. That said, it was very painful, as were the chest tubes. It hurt quite a lot to move, especially anything involving core strength (e.g. going from laying down to sitting up). I had one night in the hospital following the procedure before going home - was on IV Dilaudid in the hospital, and then I went home with oxycodone for a few days. Despite a lot of pain the first few days, I recovered pretty quickly. I was back to work two weeks later, and it overall took a few weeks to re-condition myself to activity/exercise. I think I started using my vest again about a week after the procedure, but I don't recall exactly - and I was on antibiotics the whole time to offset the possibility of an exacerbation, since I wasn't able to do much chest PT through all of this. Fortunately, I did not lose any lung function long-term from this and haven't had any lingering effects. As a strange added benefit: I used to have hemoptysis often from a certain spot in my left lung. Since the pneumo and pleurodesis, I haven't had any bleeds from that spot. My theory is that the collapse kind of re-arranged/re-booted things in that area and sealed off the vessel that was problematic.
I hope everything went well for your son this morning and that he recovers quickly!
I have not had any lung collapses since then, so the procedure seems to have done the trick. That said, it was very painful, as were the chest tubes. It hurt quite a lot to move, especially anything involving core strength (e.g. going from laying down to sitting up). I had one night in the hospital following the procedure before going home - was on IV Dilaudid in the hospital, and then I went home with oxycodone for a few days. Despite a lot of pain the first few days, I recovered pretty quickly. I was back to work two weeks later, and it overall took a few weeks to re-condition myself to activity/exercise. I think I started using my vest again about a week after the procedure, but I don't recall exactly - and I was on antibiotics the whole time to offset the possibility of an exacerbation, since I wasn't able to do much chest PT through all of this. Fortunately, I did not lose any lung function long-term from this and haven't had any lingering effects. As a strange added benefit: I used to have hemoptysis often from a certain spot in my left lung. Since the pneumo and pleurodesis, I haven't had any bleeds from that spot. My theory is that the collapse kind of re-arranged/re-booted things in that area and sealed off the vessel that was problematic.
I hope everything went well for your son this morning and that he recovers quickly!
Thank you so much. I'm so glad you have done well with yours. They performed the mechanical Pleuredesis and removed a portion of the top of his lung and a smaller portion in another area. He is on a pain back at the moment and still sleeping. They said he will have a good bit of pain because they had to be quite aggressive with the scraping to make them stick. Hoping he sleeps most of the evening.
We are leaving for vacation n 4 weeks so we are hoping to get the green light to fly. He will be so upset if we have to reschedule.
We are leaving for vacation n 4 weeks so we are hoping to get the green light to fly. He will be so upset if we have to reschedule.