Surgical resection is an effective treatment of bronchiectasis in selected patients

In this issue of Journal of Thoracic Disease Al-Refaie et al. report their retrospective observational series on 138 patients operated for bronchiectasis (BE) in a single tertiary referral hospital in Egypt (1). The authors report no operative mortality and a complication rate of only 13%. Although similar results have been presented earlier (2,3), the authors should be congratulated for their excellent outcome in this often difficult group of patients. Furthermore, their study brings an important message that surgical resection for BE can be performed with low morbidity and mortality, especially in this part of the world where pulmonary infections with serious sequale are common.