A 3D-engineered silicone stent to treat a refractory bronchopleural fistula

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Bronchopleural fistula (BPF) is a rare but life-threatening event complicating lung resection in ∼1.8% of cases and can be hard to manage [1]. When BPF is refractory, open-window thoracostomy (OWT) is one of the possible treatment options. OWT can have some major debilitating side-effects and sometimes never be closed [2]. Innovative endoscopic techniques have been described to aid healing the BPF [3]. Many have specificities that hinder their applicability to other BPF locations or sizes. We present here a promising case of successful insertion of a 3D-engineered silicone stent to plug a thoracostomy-treated chronic BPF causing dysphonia. A novel 3D-engineered silicone stent was successfully used to treat a refractory bronchopleural fistula of the right lower lobe in a patient with an open-window thoracostomy who complained of severe dysphonia and recurrent infections https://bit.ly/3GrKs2p