Background: Bronchial suction through the lumen of a bronchial blocker has been reported to accelerate lung collapse. The aim of the current study was to examine whether bronchial suction could also facilitate lung collapse when using a double-lumen tube (DLT). Methods: Eighty patients scheduled for elective video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery for lung cancer using a DLT for one-lung ventilation (OLV) were randomised into an arm that received bronchial suction and an arm that underwent spontaneous collapse (n=40 per arm). For bronchial suction, a pressure of −30 cmH 2 O was applied to the lumen of the non-ventilated lung during the first minute of OLV. The primary endpoint was the degree of lung collapse at 10 min after the start of OLV, assessed on a 10-point visual analogue scale (0: fully inflated; 10: complete collapse). Secondary outcomes included lung collapse at 1 and 5 min after the start of OLV, as well as occurrence of intraoperative hypoxemia. Results: Median (interquartile range) lung collapse scores at 10 min were statistically greater in the bronchial suction arm than in the spontaneous collapse arm [9.0 (9.0-9.0) vs. 8.5 (8.0-9.0); P=0.004]. Lung collapse was also statistically greater in the bronchial suction arm at 5 min [8.0 (7.0-8.0) vs. 7.0 (6.25-7.0 J Thorac Dis 2017;9(12):5244-5248 jtd.amegroups.com of a bronchial blocker. As bronchial suction through the lumen of the bronchial blocker offers an effective means of accelerating lung collapse (4), we hypothesized that bronchial suction could also facilitate lung collapse when using a double-lumen tube (DLT).Therefore, we carried out a randomized study to examine the effects of bronchial suction on lung collapse in patients intubated with a DLT. Suction was performed at −30 cmH 2 O during the first minute of OLV. A parallel control arm was left to undergo spontaneous lung collapse.
MethodsThe study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Peking Union Medical College Hospital (No. ZS-838) and the authors had followed the applicable Equator guidelines. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Clinical trial registration was performed at http://www.chictr.org.cn (identifier: ChiCTR-ICR-15006449) on May 27, 2015. From May 2015 to July 2015, we considered patients for inclusion in our study if they had lung cancer, were scheduled for elective videoassisted thoracoscopic surgery under general anesthesia, underwent OLV using a DLT, had an American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status of I-III and were aged 18-75 years. We excluded patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pneumothorax, pleural adhesion, early branching of the right upper lobe bronchus (4), anticipated difficult intubation (Mallampatti score ≥3), previous thoracic surgery, or bullae on chest radiographs. Patients were also excluded if their forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV 1 ) or forced vital capacity (FVC) were less than 50% of normal values.Patients were randomly allocated to a bronchial suction or spontaneous lu...