How did you get the idea for the trial?
"I am interested in the treatment of spontaneous pneumothorax because it's interesting to really know what happens within the pleural cavity."
I am interested in the treatment of spontaneous pneumothorax because it's interesting to really know what happens within the pleural cavity, how much air leak there is. Do we use the information that digital systems are able to give us? Surgeons did a lot of research with digital systems and pulmonologists did not do any research at all, even though we work with digital systems every day.
When a patient presents with pneumothorax, usually the physician doesn’t immediately connect a chest tube, but performs manual aspiration only. If there is a persistent air leak, then people get a chest tube. Our hypothesis, which we formed after the Dutch Pneumothorax Study, is that it's much more effective to connect these people immediately to Thopaz. If it is an ‘uncomplicated’ pneumothorax, you will see a high airflow, which declines quickly to zero. Then you know you can probably take the chest tube out, although based on our trial, we do advise to perform a chest X-ray to make sure the lung has approximated again. On the other hand, in some patients you will see a non-declining air leak, which tells you that you will probably need a surgeon. So we've learned a lot from this study. If I would set it up again, I would do it differently.