During a 10-year period 28 patients with shrinking pleuritis with atelectasis (SPA) were observed and operated upon. This lesion has been given different names in the literature, for instance rounded atelectasis, pleuroma, pulmonary pseudotumour, and lung folding. All patients except two were operated upon because of a diagnosis of pulmonary tumour. However, at operation no tumour was found. Th...

BACKGROUND Despite progress of medical, the fast and accurate diagnosis of tuberculous pleuritis (TP) continues to be a challenge, mainly because of the lack of specific clinical features and the difficulty in isolating the Mycobacterium tuberculosis. OBJECTIVES To investigate the role of medical thoracoscopy in definite diagnosis of tuberculous pleuritis, especially the feature of visual dia...

Twenty-three patients with nonspecific pleuritis were studied to determine clinical outcome. After a mean follow-up period of 6 months (1 to 36 months), a diagnosis was reached in 17 patients, while 6 patients remained unknown. The causes of the nonspecific pleuritis diagnosed on initial pleural biopsy were tuberculosis (11 patients, 48%), neoplasm (2 patients, 8.7%), parapneumonic effusion (1 ...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To examine the prevalence and characteristics of parenchymal tuberculous pleuritis in adult patients. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING Three hospitals affiliated with Seoul National University in South Korea. PATIENTS All patients > 15 years old with a diagnosis of tuberculous pleuritis were enrolled prospectively between January 1, 2004, and October 31, 2004. IN...

Five female patients were admitted to our clinic between 2002 and 2004 with ascites of unknown etiology. In all of the casDear Sir, Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is an autosomal recessive disease which most commonly occurs in Sephardic Jews, Armenians, Arabs and Turks. FMF is characterized by recurrent and self-limited attacks of fever accompanied by peritonitis, pleuritis, sinovitis or er...

Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is a genetic autoinflammatory disease especially affecting populations of Mediterranean origin with an autosomal recessive inheritance. The cardinal manifestations consist of short febrile and painful attacks of peritonitis, arthritis and pleuritis developing during childhood. We report the case of a 26-year-old man of Tunisian descent who had febrile episodes...

During 14 years 34 patients were operated on for shrinking pleuritis with atelectasis. They were followed up after one to 14 years (mean 6.0) by interview, chest radiography, and spirometry. Most were in good condition, but a reduction in vital capacity had occurred in eight and in FEV1 in 15 patients. Radiographs were normal in 28 patients except for small pleural or parenchymal fibrotic chang...

Shrinking pleuritis with atelectasis is a disease in which a compression atelectasis of the lung is caused by shrinking of the inflamed visceral pleura. This reaction has been attributed to asbestos. By means of scanning electron microscopy, with computerised x ray spectrophotometry and x ray diffraction analysis, tissue samples from the lymph nodes of patients with the disease and control subj...

Pulmonary paragonimiasis is a food-borne zoonosis with a wide variety of radiologic findings, which sometimes can be confused with tuberculosis and carcinoma. Therefore, differential diagnosis is always warranted. A 43-year-old male farmer, with productive cough, blood-tinged sputum and chest pain, as well as patchy consolidation and pleural effusions in chest computer tomography, was misdiagno...