Incidencia del neumotórax en el Hospital "Julio Trigo López"

objectives: to determine the behavior of pneumothorax as emergency in "julio trigo" hospital from 1995 to 2004. methods: a cross-sectional, retrospective and descriptive study was conducted. the medical records from 555 patients with pneumothorax admitted in above mentioned hospital between 1995-2004. universe included 555 patients diagnosed with pneumothorax, seen in our hospital during the above period. results: the pneumothorax is more frequent in male sex (75.1 %) and in age groups between 21 and 40 years old (52 %). the 78 % of patients presenting with spontaneous pneumothorax are smokers and from the 43 non-smokers patients 37 of them have backgrounds of respiratory affections with predominance of emphysema, the bronchial asthma and bronchiectasis. the spontaneous pneumothorax were less frequent in 195 patients (35.1 %) related to those traumatic pneumothorax ones present in 360 patients (64.9 %) and from them, 127 had hemo-pneumothorax. there were 62 patients (11 %) with complications and the more frequent ones included: the persistence of this situation (4.7 %) and hypovolemic shock (3.4 %). conclusions: the is a close relationship among the respiratory chronic diseases and the spontaneous pneumothorax. the relapsing spontaneous types are related to smoking, old age and chronic respiratory affections.