BACKGROUND Despite increasing incidence and morbidity, little evidence exists to inform the best management approach in childhood empyema. AIM To compare chest drain with intrapleural urokinase and primary video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) for the treatment of childhood empyema. METHODS Children were prospectively randomized to receive either percutaneous chest drain with intraple...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To determine if intrapleural administration of methylprednisolone acetate (MA) after therapeutic thoracentesis for symptomatic malignant pleural effusion improved time to repeat thoracentesis for symptom control, quality of life (QOL), and dyspnea. DESIGN Double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial. SETTING A tertiary care cancer treatment center in Edmonton, AB, Can...

PURPOSE Delineation of the long-term follow-up data on a series of patients with malignant mesothelioma, who received a single intrapleural dose of a nonreplicative adenoviral (Ad) vector encoding the herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase "suicide gene" (Ad.HSVtk) in combination with systemic ganciclovir. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN This report focuses on the 21 patients receiving "high-dose" therapy...

Two different repair mechanisms of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are suggested to participate in the repair of acute lung injury (ALI): (i) Cell engraftment mechanism, (ii) Paracrine/endocrine mechanism. However, the exact roles they play in the repair remain unclear. The aim of the study was to evaluate the role of paracrine/endocrine mechanism using a novel intrapleural delivery method of MSC...

STUDY OBJECTIVE The ideal agent for producing pleurodesis has not been identified. Although talc is the agent most commonly used at the present time, there are concerns about its safety. Silver nitrate is a possible alternative agent. The purpose of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of intrapleural silver nitrate and talc slurry in producing pleurodesis in rabbits. Additionally...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the role of intrapleural streptokinase in the management of complicated parapneumonic effusions in children. DESIGN Prospective comparative study. SETTING Cheng Kung University Hospital, a tertiary medical center in Tainan, Taiwan. PATIENTS AND METHODS We enrolled as our prospective study group 20 consecutive children with complicated parapneumonic effusions who rece...

BACKGROUND The third generation of bisphosphonates is clinically in use for patients of osteoporosis or malignancy-linked hypercalcemia. The agents can also produce anti-tumor effects on bone metastasis of several types of tumors. We recently found that one of the agents achieved cytotoxicity to mesothelioma in vitro and in an orthotopic animal model. Mesothelioma is resistant to a number of ch...

Fifty-four patients with evidence of locally advanced primary squamous cell bronchial carcinoma (SCC), and three patients with adenocarcinoma (AC) had lung resection to remove all the visible tumour. After operation an randomly chosen group of 20 SCC patients received adjuvant BCG immunostimulation by scarifications (BCG-A). An additional group of 14 SCC patients, and three AC patients received...

Background: We have developed a new next-generation intrapleural hyperthermic chemotherapy (IPHC) for non-small cell lung cancer with dissemination, which is a hybrid chemotherapy combined with oral S-1 medication plus conventional cisplatin-based IPHC. We now report the preliminary feasibility and outcome of quality of life (QOL) regarding this hybrid IPHC. Methods: The patient was a 76-year-o...

The scientists William S. Tillett and Sol Sherry were responsible for the introduction of intrapleural fibrinolytics as therapeutic agents, thus supplementing antimicrobial therapy in the treatment of empyema. They were the first to suggest the possibility that the use of these drugs in empyema might obviate the need for radical surgical procedures. This article highlights their original work a...