• Byeong-Ho Jeong, Sang Haak Lee, Hwan Hee Kim, Ho Il Yoon, Jung Seop Eom, Young Sik Park, Jaeyoung Cho, Taehoon Lee, Seung Joon Kim, Hyeong Jun Cho, Chan Kwon Park, Yousang Ko, Yong-Soo Kwon, Changhwan Kim, Wonjun Ji, Chang-Min Choi, Ki-Hyun Seo, Hae-Seong Nam, and Hojoong Kim.
• Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
• J. Korean Med. Sci. 2023 Jan 16; 38 (3): e13e13.

BackgroundAlthough almost all interventional pulmonologists agree that rigid bronchoscopy is irreplaceable in the field of interventional pulmonology, less is known about the types of diseases that the procedure is used for and what difficulties the operators face during the procedure. The purpose of this study is to evaluate what diseases rigid bronchoscopy is used for, whether it is widely used, and what challenges the operators face in Korea.MethodsWe enrolled 14 hospitals in this retrospective cohort of patients who underwent rigid bronchoscopy between 2003 and 2020. An online survey was conducted with 14 operators to investigate the difficulties associated with the procedure.ResultsWhile the number of new patients at Samsung Medical Center (SMC) increased from 189 in 2003-2005 to 468 in 2018-2020, that of other institutions increased from 0 to 238. The proportion of SMC patients in the total started at 100% and steadily decreased to 59.2%. The proportion of malignancy as the indication for the procedure steadily increased from 29.1% to 43.0%, whereas post-tuberculous stenosis (25.4% to 12.9%) and post-intubation stenosis (19.0% to 10.9%) steadily decreased (all P for trends < 0.001). In the online survey, half of the respondents stated that over the past year they performed less than one procedure per month. The fewer the procedures performed within the last year, the more likely collaboration with other departments was viewed as a recent obstacle (Spearman correlation coefficient, rs = -0.740, P = 0.003) and recent administrative difficulties were encountered (rs = -0.616, P = 0.019).ConclusionThis study demonstrated that the number of patients undergoing rigid bronchoscopy has been increasing, especially among cancer patients. For this procedure to be used more widely, it will be important for beginners to systematically learn about the procedure itself as well as to achieve multidisciplinary consultation.© 2023 The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences.

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