Hemoptysis - etiology,evaluation and treatment in a university hospital [Hemoptises-etiologia,avaliação e tratamento num hospital universitário]

Objective: evaluate patients admitted for hemoptysis,its etiology,use of diagnostic tests,treatment and outcome. material and methods: a retrospective analysis was done,checking clinical files of patients admitted for hemoptysis,between 1st january 2004 and 31st december 2008. results: two hundred and thirty seven patients were included in this study,with a mean age of 57.9 years. in patients under 18 years,the most frequent diagnoses were bronchiectasis and congenital cardiopathy. in adults,pulmonary tuberculosis sequelae and bronchiectasis were the dominant diagnoses (22.2 % and 15.8 %,respectively),followed by lung cancer. active infection was responsible for bleeding in 51 patients,especially pulmonary tuberculosis,pneumonia and tracheobronchitis. the etiology of hemoptysis was not established in 6.3 %. all patients performed chest x-ray. chest ct was performed in 81.4 % of patients and fiberoptic bronchoscopy in 52.7 %,the latter locating the source of bleeding in 38.4 % and establishing a final diagnosis in 17.6 %. in most patients,effective control of bleeding was achieved by medical treatment (90.7 %). during these 5 years,arterial embolization was performed in 11.8 % of patients. the main reason for embolization was recurrence prevention. there were 14 deaths (5.9 %),being identified as poor prognostic factors,hemodynamic instability and malignancy. conclusions: hemoptysis is still a frequent symptom,being chronic infection sequelae and lung cancer their main causes. in this study,factors associated with a worse prognosis were hemodynamic instability and malignancy. © 2010 published by elsevier españa,s.l. on behalf of sociedade portuguesa de pneumologia.