Surgical treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis: the phoenix of thoracic surgery?

Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is the history of thoracic surgery. History tells that the first thoracic surgical procedure, an open drainage of a TB pleural empyema was performed by Hippocrates. During the first half of last century, the finding that Mycobacterium tuberculosis was an obligate aerobe led to rapid growth of thoracic surgical operation: thoracoplasty, induced pneumothorax, plombage, and phrenic nerve crushing (1). Remarkably, the thoracoscopy was also first introduced around first decades of 1900 by Jacobeus as approach for pleural biopsy and adhesiolysis in TB patients (2).