ReviewBreathe (Sheffield, England)2018
Minimally invasive thoracic surgery for empyema.
Review in Breathe (Sheffield, England), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Surgery versus intrapleural fibrinolysis for management of complicated pleural infections: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Respiratory research · 2024Pooled it
- Video-Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery Versus Thoracotomy for Pleural Empyema: Outcomes and Risk Factors in a Retrospective Single-Center Cohort Study.Journal of cardiothoracic surgery · 2026Article
- Clinical decision-making in pediatric pneumonia: when to consider interventional: procedures? A retrospective cross-sectional study.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2025Article
- The role of molecular diagnostics in pleural empyema: insights from a 4-year analysis of microbial trends and antimicrobial use.Journal of medical microbiology · 2025Article
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- Article
- Infective Pleural Effusions-A Comprehensive Narrative Review Article.Clinics and practice · 2024Review
- Bilateral parapneumonic empyema caused byIDCases · 2024Article
- Diagnosis and management of pleural infection.Breathe (Sheffield, England) · 2023Review
- Culture-Positive and Culture-Negative Empyema After Thoracoscopic Decortication: A Comparison of Short-term and Long-term Outcomes.Open forum infectious diseases · 2023Article
- The uniportal VATS in the treatment of stage II pleural empyema: a safe and effective approach for adults and elderly patients-a single-center experience and literature review.World journal of emergency surgery : WJES · 2022Review
- Efficacy of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery versus intrapleural streptokinase for treatment of parapneumonic empyema with multiloculation and septation.Kardiochirurgia i torakochirurgia polska = Polish journal of cardio-thoracic surgery · 2022Article
- Assessment of Intraoperative Microbiological Culture in Patients with Empyema: Comparison with Preoperative Microbiological Culture.Annals of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery : official journal of the Association of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons of Asia · 2021Article
- Optimal timing of video-assisted thoracic surgery for acute pyothorax: a retrospective study.General thoracic and cardiovascular surgery · 2021Article
- Management of Pleural Infection.Pulmonary therapy · 2021Review
- Pleural empyema in children - benefits of primary thoracoscopic treatment.Wideochirurgia i inne techniki maloinwazyjne = Videosurgery and other miniinvasive techniques · 2021Article
- Role of Anti-Tuberculous Treatment in the Outcome of Decortication for Chronic Tuberculous Empyema.Cureus · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The widely accepted and still increasing use of video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) in pleuro-pulmonary pathology imposes the need to deal with two major pitfalls: the first is to avoid its unselective use, while the second relates to inappropriate rejection of VATS on the basis of "insufficient radicality". Unlike a quite established role of VATS in lung cancer patients, in patients with pleural empyema, the role of VATS is less clearly defined. The current evidence about VATS in patients with pleural empyema could be summarised as follows: VATS is accepted as a useful treatment option for fibrinopurulent empyema, but the treatment failure rate increases with the increasing proportion of stage III empyema, necessitating further surgical options like thoracotomy and decortication. As both pulmonologists and surgeons deal with diagnosis and treatment of pleural empyema, this article is an attempt to highlight the existing evidence in a more user-friendly way in order to help practising physicians to optimise the use of VATS in these patients. In other words, in the absence of randomised studies comparing VATS and thoracotomy, the key question to be answered is: are there any pre-operative findings that can be used to select patients for initial VATS
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.