Abstract:
OBJECTIVE To observe the effect of bronchoscopic interventional therapy on clinical treatment outcomes of the tuberculosis patients complicated with tracheobronchial stenosis.
METHODS A total of 179 tuberculosis patients complicated with tracheobronchial stenosis who received non-interventional therapy and interventional therapy in Beijing Chest Hospital, Capital Medical University and Tianjin Haihe Hospital, respectively, from Jan. 2019 to Jul. 2022 were enrolled in the study, and the clinical data of the patients were retrospectively analyzed. The baseline differences between the interventional group and the non-interventional group were balanced by means of propensity score matching. Totally 75 patients were finally included. The treatment outcomes were compared between the two groups of patients.
RESULTS The overall improvement rate of symptoms of the interventional group was 71.53%, higher than 54.76% of the non-interventional group (
P=0.042); there was no significant difference in the exacerbation rate between the two groups (
P=0.553). There was no significant difference in the improvement rate of symptoms between the interventional group and the non-interventional group after the propensity score matching(74.51%
vs. 58.33%,
P=0.156), and there was also no significant difference in the exacerbation rate(
P=0.653).
CONCLUSIONS Among the tuberculosis patients complicated with tracheobronchial stenosis, the interventional therapy partially alleviated the symptoms. However, its impact on the 1-year symptom improvement fails to achieve statistical significance after the baseline characteristics are balanced by the propensity score matching. Given that the improvement of symptoms may be affected by multiple factors, prospective research on large size of samples is still necessary for further validation.