Medical Thoracoscopy Implementation after a European Respiratory Society Course Held from 2003 to 2016: A Survey

<b><i>Background:</i></b> Medical thoracoscopy (MT) is an important procedure in the management of patients with pleural diseases. <b><i>Objectives:</i></b> We designed a survey to explore whether the participants of our courses implement MT at their hospital after attending the course as no real-life data exist. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> We distributed by e-mail a questionnaire to the participants of the courses. The questionnaire included general information about the participants, the precourse experience on MT, the postcourse implementation of the technique, and the reasons for failure. <b><i>Results:</i></b> Responses were obtained from 104 of 324 (32.3%) identified emails. Responders were males (76%), seniors (59.7%), respiratory physicians (91.3%), working in a public/university hospital (78.8%), and mostly beginners (65.3%) from 41 countries. Following the course, 58.6% of responders either created or modified a MT program in their workplace. The reasons for not performing MT before the course were as follows: patients’ referral to a thoracic surgeon, not enough training, lack of funding, department understaffed, and refusal by the hospital/department. Overall, these reasons were significantly decreased (<i>p</i> = 0.002) after the course. <b><i>Conclusions:</i></b> Real-life data of our survey suggest that more than half of the responders have implemented the technique or modified their practice according to the skills they got from the course.