Table 5.
Incidence and severity of bleeding regarding bronchoscopic intervention
| Technique | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cryobiopsy (N = 359) | Forceps biopsy (N = 359) | |||||
| Bleeding severity | None/Mild | Moderate/Severe | None/Mild | Moderate/Severe | p- value | |
| Clinical relevance | Low | High | Low | High | ||
| Intervention – no (%) | 301 (83.8) | 58 (16.2) | 344 (95.8) | 15 (4.2) | TBCB vs TBFB < 0.001 | |
| Probe size | ||||||
| Cryobiopsy | 357 | |||||
| Small: 1.9 mm | 211 | 187 | 25 |
SC vs. LC: p = 0.006 SC vs. LF: p < 0.001 |
||
| Large: 2.4 mm | 146 | 112 | 33 | |||
| Forceps | 355 | |||||
| Small: 1.8–2.0 mm | 169 | 165 | 4 | SF vs. LF: p = 0.12 | ||
| Large: 2.2–2.6 mm | 186 | 175 | 11 | |||
| Localization of biopsy | ||||||
| Upper lobe | 48 | 13 | p = 1.0 | |||
| Lower lobe | 112 | 32 | ||||
| Upper lobe | 49 | 4 | p = 0.27 | |||
| Lower lobe | 109 | 4 | ||||
*Clinical relevance of bleeding is categorized as “low” (None, and mild bleeding) and “high” (moderate and severe bleeding) for both biopsy techniques. Absolute number of evaluable patients is listed in the second column. P-values were calculated by 2 tail Fisher’s exact test for independent samples, comparing small cryobiopsy (SC) and large cryobiopsy (LC), small forceps biopsy (SF) and large forceps biopsy (LF) as well as small cryobiopsy (SC) and large forceps biopsy (LF)