[tlunter]

Oddly, as the article noted in a single line, they're common among tall, skinny men. I've had three lung collapses so far, but all do to Birt-Hogg-Dube [1]. When I was being checked out in the hospital each time, the nurses/hospital staff all said, "ah, yea, tall and skinny".

In reality, you can live through a lung collapse and do nothing. The doctor will take an x-ray, make sure the pocket of air outside the lung is shrinking and send you home. If it's fully collapsed, you'll get some surgery to repair it and a tube to make sure nothing gets back in. It never seemed as life-threatening as the article suggests. It wasn't fun, but I also never felt like I was near death or anything.

It feels like the author just found spontaneous pneumothoraxes to be interesting, and built an article around it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birt%E2%80%93Hogg%E2%80%93Dub%...