High Sustained Nocturnal Hypoxemic Burden Identifies Patients With High Risk for Prolonged Hospital Stay After Anatomical Lung Surgery, a Brief Report

Clinical Practice Points •High nocturnal hypoxemic burden defined as T90 > 12% of total recording time in polygraphy was found in 24.3% of the included patients. The hypoxemic burden is easy to assess with polygraphy. Patients with high hypoxemic burden have a risk for a longer hospital stay after anatomical lung resection. Therefore, information about nocturnal hypoxemic burden before anatomical lung surgery identifies patients at risk for longer LOS. Multiple underlying pathologies as COPD, heart failure, sleep apnea or pulmonary fibrosis can cause nocturnal hypoxemic burden. Some of them can be treated specifically. In the future, this could be used in the sense of individualized precision medicine to specifically identify and prehabilitate patients with high nocturnal hypoxemic burden preoperatively to reduce their length of hospital stay and thus reduce costs and potential complications associated with prolonged length of hospital stay.