Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Med.

Sec. Pulmonary Medicine

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1624985

Efficacy and Prognostic Analysis of Bronchoscopic Intervention in Elderly Patients with Tracheobronchial Tuberculosis

Provisionally accepted
Yueyang  TianYueyang Tian1Tianhe  SuTianhe Su2Leilei  ShenLeilei Shen2Jikun  ZhouJikun Zhou2Yang  SunYang Sun2*
  • 1Other
  • 2The Fifth Hospital of Shijiazhuang, Shijiazhuang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This study investigated the efficacy and prognosis of bronchoscopic interventional therapy in elderly patients with tracheobronchial tuberculosis (TBTB). We prospectively included 142 elderly patients with TBTB for interventional treatments such as bronchoscopic balloon dilation, mechanical evacuation, and stent implantation, and long-term follow-up (median 28.4 months). The results showed that the technical success rate of interventional therapy was 90.8%, 92.3% of patients had improved symptoms, and FEV1 was significantly improved from 43.2% at baseline to 65.8% after surgery (p<0.001). Fibrostenosis TBTB (OR 3.42), Freitag grade 5 stenosis (OR 2.76), stenosis length > 2 cm (OR 2.18), and Charlson comorbidity index ≥3 (OR 1.98) were independent predictors of poor prognosis. Restenosis occurred in 27.1% of patients after surgery, and the survival rate of older patients (≥ 75 years) was significantly lower than that of younger patients (81.6% vs. 94.2%, p=0.003). In this study, we propose a prognostic risk scoring model and confirm that bronchoscopic intervention is safe and effective in elderly patients with TBTB, but patient selection is crucial.

Keywords: Tracheobronchial tuberculosis, elderly patients, Bronchoscopic intervention, airway narrowing, prognostic analysis

Received: 08 May 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Tian, Su, Shen, Zhou and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Yang Sun, onxv11@163.com

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.