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...

The aim is to examine whether the changes in pleural fluid interleukin (IL)-1beta, IL-2, IL-6, and IL-8 levels were significant in differential diagnosis of childhood pleural effusions. IL-1beta, IL-2, IL-6, and IL-8 levels in pleural fluids of all 36 patients were measured. The levels of IL-1beta, IL-2, IL-6, and IL-8 in pleural fluids were statistically significantly higher in the transudate ...

UNLABELLED The purpose of the study was to evaluate predictive value of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the differential diagnosis of pleural effusion. MATERIAL AND METHODS By Light's criteria in 29 cases exudates and 10 transudates was recognized. We investigated 39 patients with pleural effusion (congestive heart failure--10, parapneumonic--11, tuberculous--6, malignant--12, tr...

When a patient with an undiagnosed pleural effusion is evaluated, the first question to answer is whether the patient has a transudate or an exudate. This is best done using Light's criteria, but these criteria occasionally misidentify a transudate as an exudate. If the patient's pleural fluid meets exudative criteria, but the patient appears clinically to have a transudative effusion, then the...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of computed tomography (CT) findings for characterizing pleural effusions with the use of attenuation values. MATERIAL/METHODS One hundred and twenty eight patients with pleural effusions on thoracic CT who underwent thoracentesisis within two weeks were studied. Pleural effusions were classified as exudates or transudates accor...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study is to identify the factors associated with the occurrence of pleural effusion and to investigate the characteristics of pleural effusion in scrub typhus. METHODS We conducted a retrospective analysis of the medical records of scrub typhus patients between January 2004 and December 2011 at Chosun University Hospital in South Korea. A total of 445 scrub typhus p...

Although Meigs' syndrome is regarded as a well-defined entity, contradictory data on pleural fluid characteristics have been presented, with some papers classifying it as a transudate, whereas others stating that it is an exudate.The aims of the study were: (1) to evaluate pleural fluid characteristics in patients with Meigs' syndrome and (2) to analyze the prevalence of transudative and exudat...