Incidence of complications in bronchoscopy. Multicentre prospective study of 20,986 bronchoscopies.

To evaluate the frequency of complications in bronchoscopy from data compiled between 1/2/2002 to 1/2/2003.Nineteen Italian centres of thoracic endoscopy participated in the study, for a total of 20,986 bronchoscopies (FBS), including 10,658 explorative bronchoscopies (EB) (50.79\%), 5,520 bronchial biopsies (BB) (26.30\%), 1,660 transbronchial biopsies (TBB) (7.91\%), 1,127 broncho-alveolar lavages (BAL) (5.37\%), 930 transbronchial needle-aspirates (TBNA) (4.43\%), 1.091 therapeutic bronchoscopies (TB), comprising ND-YAG Laser, argon-plasma, electrocautery knife, stent insertion (5.20\%). 82.4\% of the procedures involved the use of a flexible bronchoscope, 16.3\% were carried out using a rigid bronchoscope and 1.3\% using the mixed technique.The total number of complications recorded was 227 (1.08\% of the cases examined), including 20 (0.09\%) during local anesthesia and pre-medication, 195 (0.92\%) during the endoscopic procedures and 12 (0.05\%) in the two hours following FBS. The total number of deaths was 4 (0.02\%), due to cardiac arrest, pulmonary edema, delayed respiratory failure and shock in pre-medication, respectively. 68.28\% of the complications were treated medically, 25.99\% by means of endoscopy and 5.72\% with surgery. The healing percentage was 98.2\%.This study has shown that bronchoscopy is a safe method with low incidence of mortality and complications. The preparation, experience and continuous training of the operators of the medical and nursing team seem to play a fundamental role in reducing the incidence of complications at least in certain procedures such as BB and TBB.