QUESTION What factors predict postoperative pulmonary and pleural complications following aortic valve replacement? DESIGN Retrospective study. PARTICIPANTS One thousand consecutive patients who underwent aortic valve replacement with a pericardial valve between 1986 and 2006. Of these, 610 underwent also coronary artery surgery. OUTCOME MEASURES Thirty putative predictors were investigat...

The aim of this study was to describe a scoring system for high resolution computed tomographic (HRCT) scans analogous to the International Labour Office (ILO) scoring system for plain chest radiographs in patients with asbestos related disease. Interstitial fibrosis, pleural disease, and emphysema were scored, the reproducibility and the interobserver agreement using this scoring system were e...

BACKGROUND High HIV burden countries have experienced a high burden of pleural TB in HIV-infected patients. OBJECTIVE To review the epidemiology, immunopathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of pleural TB in HIV-infected patients. METHODS A literature search from 1950 to June 2011 in MEDLINE was conducted. RESULTS Two-hundred and ninety-nine studies were identified, of which 30 met the in...

The burden of a number of pleural diseases continues to increase internationally. Although many pleural procedures have historically been the domain of interventional radiologists or thoracic surgeons, in recent years, there has been a marked expansion in the techniques available to the pulmonologist. This has been due in part to both technological advancements and a greater recognition that pl...

IgG4-related disease is an immune-mediated fibro-inflammatory disease, characterized by lymphoplasmacytic infiltration composed of IgG4-positive plasma cells of various organs with elevated circulating levels of IgG4. This disease is now reported with increasing frequency and usually affects middle-aged men. Massive pleural effusion in children is an uncommon feature in IgG4-related disease. He...

Pleural involvement in systemic diseases is usually a sign of lesions occurring at other levels. Despite the low incidence (around 1%) of pleural effusions caused by systemic diseases, more often connective tissue diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis or systemic lupus erythematosus, may present with this. Similarly, vasculitis, such as Wegener's granulomatosis, Churg-Strauss syndrome, or less...

Pleural effusion is a rare complication in non-tuberculous mycobacterial infection. We report a case of Mycobacterium intracellulare pleuritis with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in a 69-year-old man presenting with dyspnea. Pleural effusion revealed lymphocyte dominant exudate. M. intracellulare was identified using a polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method and...

as evidenced by the very low levels of antibody found in our patients. In our study, no overlap in optical density values were seen between sarcoidosis and tuberculosis, but in a larger series overlap will probably be seen. While it is not yet possible to discriminate between tuberculosis and other diseases with complete reliability, we would proceed to invasive modalities (transbronchial lung ...

The ability to induce tuberculous pleuritis in Mycobacterium bovis BCG-vaccinated guinea pigs was investigated as a model of human disease. A pleural effusion of 5 to 10 ml was obtained 6 to 7 days after the bilateral pleural injection of a suspension of heat-killed M. tuberculosis cells. Histological lesions were indicative of granulomatous pleuritis. Comparative studies of T lymphocytes obtai...

A 47-year-old woman who had never smoked was evaluated for chest wall pain, cough and dyspnea that proved to be due to neoplastic right pleural disease with effusion. Cytological examination of the pleural fluid and histological analysis of a biopsy specimen of the pleural mass obtained during thoracoscopy were consistent with a diagnosis of small cell carcinoma. The patient was treated with tw...