Chest
Clinical InvestigationsThe PleuraAtmospheric Pressure Changes and Outdoor Temperature Changes in Relation to Spontaneous Pneumothorax
Section snippets
Patients
One hundred fifteen consecutive SP events that occurred between December 1, 1991, and November 30, 1993 were retrospectively analyzed; all cases were drawn from two hospitals in Amsterdam, the Free University Hospital and the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis. The initial onset of SP was defined as the onset of patient-reported complaints. Only patients who contracted SP in Amsterdam, and who were there for at least 1 day before, were included. Seventy-nine percent were men, the mean age was 33.4 ±
Results
SP occurred on 14.7% of the 731 days recorded (115 cases in all; on 8 days, two SP cases were reported).
Amsterdam, a relatively small but highly populated area, had 724,000 inhabitants in 1993 and nine hospitals. During the study period, 409 SP cases were seen in all nine hospitals. During the 2-year study, 28.9% of the SP patients in Amsterdam were treated in the two study hospitals.19 No seasonal differences were found between our incidence data and the complete Amsterdam group, which
Discussion
The confirmation of the feeling of clinicians, that SP patients are admitted in clusters, strongly supports the hypothesis that weather changes (or related conditions) play a role in the mechanism responsible for development of SP.15 Our findings of SP clustering were later supported by a retrospective analysis of Boulay et al.22 The first question we had was whether pressure differences in the atmosphere exert an influence on the chance of contracting a pneumothorax. Because AP and temperature
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