Fig 1.
Radiographic findings for a 25-year-old woman with congenital scoliosis who developed postoperative pulmonary complications (bilateral pneumonia and bilateral pleural effusion) after posterior instrumentation, posterior T11 vertebral column resection, and correction and fusion surgery.
Preoperative radiographs (A, B) demonstrate a left main thoracic curve of 120°, which was corrected to 38° postoperatively (C, D). The operation time was 450 min, and the volume of intraoperative blood transfusion was 3200 ml. A bedside chest radiograph taken on the third postoperative day (E) and the thoracic ultrasound showed bilateral pneumonia and pleural effusion. After 5 days of treatment with closed thoracic drainage and antibiotics, the patient’s lung condition improved markedly (F). The pulmonary complications had basically recovered by 8 days postoperatively (G).
Table 1.
Incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications.
Table 2.
Baseline clinical and perioperative characteristics of patients with or without pulmonary complications.
Fig 2.
Receiver-operator characteristic curve analyses for the prediction of postoperative pulmonary complication.
(A) Age, with a cutoff value of 18.1 years; (B) Cobb angle, with a cutoff value of 77°; (C) operation time, with a cutoff value of 430 min; and (D) blood transfusion, with a cutoff value of 1500 ml.
Table 3.
Results of multivariate logistic regression analysis regarding the predictive factors for pulmonary complications.
Table 4.
Relationship between pulmonary function, age, and preoperative Cobb angle in patients with congenital scoliosis.