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Vol.44 No.6 contents

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- Original Article -

Prediction of Postoperative Pulmonary Function After Pneumonectomy for Lung Cancer

Motoaki Yasukawa¹, Katsuhiro Nakagawa¹, Masahiro Sakaguchi¹ Teruo Iwasaki¹, Naoko Sasaki^1
1Department of Thoracic Surgery, Osaka Prefectural Medical Center for Respiratory and Allergic Diseases, Osaka, Japan

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Objective. Patients undergone pneumonectomy for lung cancer were divided into two groups according to the presence or absence of preoperative respiratory complications, and discordances between predicted respiratory functions and actual values are examined for each group. Methods. Of the 133 cases with pneumonectomy for lung cancer carried out at our hospital in the period from 1990 to 2001, 33 were selected as study subjects, among which no incidence of postoperative complications was observed and in whom respiratory function tests could be performed 3 to 6 months after the surgical treatment. Prior to the operation, predicted values of forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV_1.0) were calculated using blood flow scintigrams, and actual values of FVC and FEV_1.0 were determined postoperatively using spirometry. The subjects were divided into two groups with or without preoperative respiratory disease complications, and predicted and actual functional persistence rates were compared by Student's paired t-test for each group. Results. There were 21 cases of preoperative respiratory disease complications. In the group without any respiratory disease complications, there were no statistically significant differences in either FVC and FEV_1.0 between predicted and actual values. However, in the respiratory disease complication group, there were statistically significant differences between predicted and actual values in FVC (p<0.001) and FEV_1.0 (p=0.0486), the actual functional persistence rates being significantly lower than the predicted values for both parameters. Conclusion. In cases of preoperative respiratory disease complications, actual postoperative respiratory functions might decline to a lower than predicted level, which requires cautions.
key words: Lung cancer, Predicted postoperative pulmonary function, Lung perfusion scanning

Received: April 5, 2004
Accepted: August 10, 2004

JJLC 44 (6): 683-687, 2004