Oesophageal pressure measured with an air-filled, thin latex balloon on a 6 French gauge catheter can accurately measure intraoesophageal pressures in ventilated preterm babies. Intraoesophageal pressures and intrapleural pressures are equivalent. Less than 10% of the applied positive ventilator pressure is transmitted to the oesophageal balloon and the intrapleural catheter (intercostal drain)...

Erionite and crocidolite fibers were tested for carcinogenicity by intrapleural and intraperitoneal injection (una tantum) in 40 Sprague-Dawley rats per route for each fiber type. Pleural mesotheliomas were found in nine of ten animals that died within a year after intrapleural injection with erionite fibers. No pleural tumors were found among the animals treated at the same time and in the sam...

Epmyema thoracis is associated with high mortality ranging between 6% to 24%. The incidence of empyema is increasing in both children and adults; the cause of this surge is unknown. Most cases of empyema complicate community- or hospital-acquired pneumonia but a proportion results from iatrogenic causes or develops without pneumonia. Parapneumonic effusions (PPE) develop in about one half of th...

For many years, intrapleural administration of fi brinolytics and deoxyribonuclease (DNase) was a controversial issue in the management of complicated parapneumonic eff usion and empyema. 1 Th eir eff ectiveness was assessed in a large clinical trial (the second Multicenter Intrapleural Sepsis Trial) . 2 Coadministration of tissue plasminogen activator and DNase was benefi cial in terms of radi...

Twenty-one patients with malignant pleural effusion (MPE) were prospectively entered into a nonrandomized, single-armed study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of recombinant interferon (IFN) alpha-2b (INTRON A; Schering-Plough; Kenilworth, NJ) as an intrapleural palliative agent. From March 1989 through February 1993 (48 months), 21 patients were entered into the study. No symptomatic effusi...

OBJECTIVE Local recurrence remains a major problem in the treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma. The aim of the underlying study was to establish a standardised local recurrence model in rats which enables to study different intrapleural therapies. MATERIALS AND METHODS Fifty microlitre containing 1 x 10(6) cells of a syngeneic rat malignant mesothelioma cell line (II-45), established f...