Stab???
Man, is that a medical term?
Sounds HORRIBLE.
well, that is my term for it. They told me that they would put a cloth over my face and insert the chest tube and I said....No you won't! Three officers I worked with also had a spontaneous collapsed lung and they all had to have chest tubes.
Now it sounds like Clinton has a partial pnuemothorax (partial lung collapse) It happened to me three times but since they were partial, and I refused the chest tube, I was given bed rest...you have to be propped up cause it is too painful to lay down. His plane trip might have helped cause the collasped lung
If it is true that he is to undergo a pleuredesis he probably has a loculation of fluid between the lung and chest wall which has "walled off" and accummulated fluid. I suspect, if that is the case, they have "needled" the fluid under ultrasound direction or possibly CT direction and drained the fluid, only for it to recur. The decortication proceedure will create an enormous inflammatory reaction between the lung which has been stripped of its pleura (covering over the lung) and the chest wall. It will then adhese and obliterate the "pocket" where the fluid has recurred.
As one freeper said, it may be possible to do this with a thoracoscope,(that is without completely opening the chest wall). If they have to do an open thoracotomy, he will have a more difficult post operative period with much pain. Those freepers who have had their chest opened can attest that it is very, very painful to spread the ribs. Most of the time when you do that you have to break ribs to get your hand into the chest. This will sound paradoxical, but once you break the adhesions and enter the pocket of fluid, then you rub the pleura with a 4 by 4 or laparotomy sponge to irritate it (sometimes putting in medication or talc) to create an inflammatory response to "cement" the lung with the chest wall. ONce it fuses, (grows together) there is not a potential space for fluid to accummulate.