In the United States, approximately one million patients each year develop a pleural effusion. Pleural effusions have classically been divided into transudative and exudative pleural effusions. A transudative pleural effusion occurs when the systemic factors influencing pleural fluid formation and reabsorption are altered so that pleural fluid accumulates; an exudative pleural effusion occurs w...

Pleural fluid characteristics of 26 patients diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma over an 18-year period were reviewed and compared with those of patients with effusions due to other malignancies. Survival from time of initial thoracentesis was directly correlated with pleural pH and decreased pleural fluid/serum glucose ratios but was not related to protein or LDH concentration. Decreased ple...

Background: Pleural effusion is a common condition in pulmonary medicine. Determining the cause of the pleural effusion is a difficult task. The distinction between an exudate and a transudate is the first and the most important step in the differential diagnosis of a pleural effusion. Light’s criterion have been previously used for classifying pleural effusion. There are multiple other biochem...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To evaluate the usefulness of two new parameters for separating pleural transudates and exudates: pleural fluid cholinesterase level and pleural fluid to serum cholinesterase ratio, and to compare the results with the other well-established criteria. DESIGN Prospective evaluation of the patients referred for diagnostic thoracentesis. SETTING Pulmonary sections of a community...

Introduction: Different etiologies of pleural effusion are diagnosed based on serum and plural fluid characteristics. The aim of this study was to assess and compare the serum and pleural fluid protein to lactate dehyrogenase (Pr/LDH) ratio in exudative pleural effusions. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted on 60 patients with exudative pleural effusion including: 20 cases with para...

pleural epithelioid hemangioendothelioma (ehe) is a rare malignancy of vascular-endothelial origin with non-specific symptoms and an unpredictable outcome. diagnosis of this condition by imaging modalities is challenging, and no standard therapeutic approaches have been established in this regard. in this paper, we described the case of a patient with a low-grade fever, coughing and chest pain ...

a 16-month-old holstein heifer with a history of anorexia and respiratory distress was referred to the veterinary research and teaching hospital of tehran university. heart and lung sounds were inaudible on the left side but greatly increased on the right side. on electrocardiography (ecg), decreased amplitudes of ecg parameters were observed. ultrasonography results revealed a pleural effusion...

actinomycetes are an uncommon agent of human infections and its pathogenic factors are not known. the present study reports a rare case isolation of an actinomycete from a woman pleural fluid; the strain was identified by 16s rrna gene sequence analysis. this strain was tested to produce an extracellular protease that hydrolysis gelatin, casein and hemoglobin on agar mediums. the purification o...

vs interferon (IFN)showed that IFNis superior to ADA, although the difference is small. Therefore, establishing a diagnosis of tuberculosis pleuritis based only on pleural fluid ADA without pleural biopsy findings is still controversial.6 We do not intend to deny the usefulness of pleural fluid ADA for diagnosing tuberculosis pleuritis. Furthermore, we do not insist that pleural fluid INFcan re...