Low cytomegalovirus viremia prevalence in a general intensive care population.

We thank Dr Aelony for his interest in our recent article in CHEST (June 2010) 1 on the occurrence of lung injury following thoracoscopic talc insuffl ation (TTI). We did not report on pleurodesis success rate because our goal was to determine the incidence of respiratory complications. We acknowledge the design limitations of our retrospective study. We carefully assessed all cases of postprocedure respiratory insuffi ciency. Up to eight subjects may have had talc-related lung injury, but due to atypical features or because an alternate diagnosis was possible, we excluded four cases from the incidence calculation of 2.8%. Dr Aelony correctly notes that radiographic fi ndings may be seen after pleural drainage or simple thoracoscopy. The occurrence of respiratory insuffi ciency was defi ned based on symptoms and increased oxygen requirements in addition to radiographic changes. Dr Aelony states that we are inappropriately referencing two articles as showing complications of talc pleurodesis. Rehse et al 2