Current State of Empyema Management

Semenkovich and colleagues examined the current treatment practices for empyema in New York state using information from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project New York State Inpatient Database. The largest proportion of patients were initially treated with chest tube placement (38.2%) rather than a VATS or open surgical approach, and only 53% of patients were treated with a single procedure, highlighting that definitive treatment was often not the first treatment given. When patients were stratified by definitive treatment, the reintervention rate was higher for patients who treated with a chest tube than for patients treated by either surgical approach (6.1% versus 1.9% and 2.1%).