Surgery for hemoptysis in patients with benign lung disease

Hemoptysis is a life-threatening disease; thus, proper treatment should be conducted immediately. Depending on the severity of hemoptysis, etiology, clinical features, and/or vital signs, various approaches can be applied, including conservative medical treatment, endobronchial control method, bronchial artery embolization (BAE), and surgery (1,2). Given its technical advances, easy accessibility, and low treatment-associated morbidity and mortality, BAE has recently been widely used as the first treatment of choice. However, the therapeutic effect of BAE is transient, and a number of studies report disease recurrence rates as high as 10–55% (3). Consequently, surgery plays a major role in controlling the symptoms of hemoptysis permanently by eradicating the lesions associated with the underlying disease. Although high morbidity and mortality rates were problematic in the past, there has been recent improvement in postoperative results in light of advances in surgical techniques and enhanced perioperative care (4,5). We investigated cases at Chonnam National University Hwasun Hospital in which surgical lung resection was performed to treat hemoptysis due to a benign lung disease and subsequently analyzed factors influencing the postoperative outcome