Carlens J, et al. - Physicians designed this study to assess frequency and severity of clearly defined complications of bronchoscopy in children that occur both during and after the procedure. In addition, they identified potential risk factors. In children, bronchoscopy was relatively safe. However, adverse events could occur and knowledge of risk factors appeared to be helpful in preventing complications.

Methods

• The physicians performed a retrospective single-center analysis of 670 elective bronchoscopies in 522 children aged 0-17 years during the time period of 2008-2012.
• They excluded procedures in intensive care unit patients and children after lung transplantation.

Results

• In this study, mean patient age was 5.58 years, 61.5% had underlying chronic diseases.
• The physicians noted intraprocedural complications in 7.2% of all procedures.
• Hypoxemia was the most common intraprocedural complications, occurring in 4.8% of cases.
• They documented postprocedural adverse events in 25.8%, the most frequent of which were fever in 14.2% and transient oxygen dependency in 13.4% of cases.
• They found no bronchoscopy related deaths.
• They used multivariate logistic regression to identify risk factors for (1) any complication, or (2) severe complications.
• Factors significantly contributed to the risk of any complication were age below 2 years (OR 1.837 [1.224-2.757], P=0.003) and primary ciliary dyskinesia (OR 4.821 [2.018-11.552], P < 0.001).
• Independent risk factors for severe complications were age below 2 years (OR 2.478 [1.072-5.728], P=0.034) and underlying cardiovascular disease (OR 2.678 [1.013-7.077], P=0.047).