Características clínicas y epidemiológicas del neumotórax en personas de 18 años y más: Hospital Vicente Corral Moscoso y Teófilo Dávila de Machala, 2007-2011

Abstract

Introduction: Pneumothorax is one of the most frequent reasons people come to the emergency room, this condition is a medical emergency that can cause steadily worsening oxygen shortage, unless reversed by effective treatment, these sequels can progress and cause death for which it must be diagnose and taken care of immediately by the physician. Objective: to establish its clinic characteristics, epidemiology, diagnose and X ray characteristics in patients 18 and older who came to the emergency room of both the Vicente Corral Moscoso hospital in Cuenca city and Teófilo Dávila in Machala city. Methodology: a backwards-descriptive research was conducted from January 20007 to December 2011. The sample used for this research was patients 18 years and older who came to the above mentioned hospitals and were diagnosed Pneumothorax positive. A pre-designed chart was used to gather all the information. In addition, all the data was taken from each patient’s charts Results: Patients were mostly diagnosed traumatic pneumothorax positive which was 85.6 % out of total cases was. The most relevant clinic characteristics were as follows: moderate pain 40.8%; tachycardia15.2%; deviation of the trachea to the right side 32.8% , of the veins of the neck distension 38.4% pulmonary hipersonority 76,8% , decreased breath sounds 80%, dyspnea 99.2%; cyanosis 22.4%. The methodology used to diagnosed a patient was as follows: chest X-ray100% ; computed tomography27.2% y magnetic resonance (MRI) in the 0.8% de los cases; for treatment 16% of the time the insertion of a syringe was to take out the air was needed and the use of a chest tube in a 100%. The average rate a patient stayed at the hospitals was 5 days and finally the percentage patient’s mortality was 10.4%. Conclusions: Differences in the clinic characteristics between the two hospitals were observed related to its causes, the pain intensity, heart rate, and Cyanosis. It was also discovered that this disease has a high mortality rate.