Diagnostic value of medical thoracoscopy for undiagnosed pleural effusions

Chen,Rui‑Lin; Zhang,Yong‑Qing; Wang,Jun; Wu,Hua; Yang,Shu‑Mei

doi:10.3892/etm.2018.6742

Diagnostic value of medical thoracoscopy for undiagnosed pleural effusions

Authors:
- Rui‑Lin Chen
- Yong‑Qing Zhang
- Jun Wang
- Hua Wu
- Shu‑Mei Yang
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Affiliations: Department of Respiratory Medicine, Shaanxi Provincial People's Hospital, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710068, P.R. China
Published online on: September 17, 2018 https://doi.org/10.3892/etm.2018.6742
Pages: 4590-4594
Copyright: © Chen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License.

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Abstract

To investigate the diagnostic value of medical thoracoscopy for the diagnosis of undiagnosed pleural effusions, a retrospective study was performed on the clinical data of 86 patients with undiagnosed pleural effusions who had medical thoracoscopy at Shaanxi Provincial People's Hospital (Xi'an, China) between May 2012 and November 2013. Of the 86 patients, 79 cases of pleural effusions were confirmed by medical thoracoscopic biopsy with a diagnosis rate of 91.9%. In these 79 confirmed patients, 37 had pleura cancer metastasis (43.0%) and 20 had tuberculous pleuritis (23.3%). The most common type of malignant tumor was lung cancer, accounting for 86.5% of the patients with pleural metastasis. Tuberculosis was often observed in the 16‑35 years of age patient group, while malignant tumors were typically detected in the 36‑65 year and 65 years and above patient groups. Notably, the overall diagnosis distribution had little connection with sex or smoking‑history. Neither mortality nor major complications were observed in patients who received medical thoracoscopy examination. In conclusion, medical thoracoscopy is a safe and effective examination method and has an important diagnostic value for unidentified pleural effusion in patients.

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