Table 1. Clinical outcomes of randomized controlled trials comparing drainage plus fibrinolytic agents with video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery for the treatment of parapneumonic empyema in children.
| Study | Sonnappa et al. 2006 (United Kngdom) (9) |
St Peter et al. 2009 (United States) (10) |
Cobanoglu et al. 2011 (Turkey) (11) |
Marhuenda et al. 2014 (Spain) (8) |
|||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Treatment group [n] |
Treatment group [n] |
Treatment group [n] |
Treatment group [n] |
||||||||||||
| Urokinase [30] | VATS [30] | P | tPA [18] | VATS [18] | P | Streptokinase [27] | VATS [27] | P | Urokinase [50] | VATS [53] | P | ||||
| Length of stay (days) | 6 | 6 | 0.31 | 6.8 | 6.9 | 0.96 | 10.4 | 7.4 | <0.01 | 9 | 10 | 0.45 | |||
| Charges ($) | 9,127±6,914 | 11,379±10,146 | <0.01 | 7,600±5,400 | 11,700±2,900 | 0.02 | 387±72 | 957±137 | <0.01 | NA | NA | NA | |||
| Failure rate, n (%) | 5 (16.7) | 5 (16.7) | NA | 3 (16.7) | 0 (0) | NA | 8 (29.6) | 6 (22.2) | 0.53 | 5 (10.0) | 8 (15.1) | 0.47 | |||
| Chest tube kept in situ (days) | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | 9.5 | 6.6 | <0.01 | 5 | 4 | <0.01 | |||
| Number of febrile days after intervention | 2.5 | 2.5 | 0.635 | 3.8 | 3.1 | 0.46 | 3.9 | 3.4 | 0.78 | 6 | 4 | 0.62 | |||
P values are presented as the median or mean ± standard deviation. VATS, video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery; tPA, tissue plasminogen activator; NA, not available.