You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Letter
Is investigation of patients with haemoptysis and normal chest radiograph justified?
  1. A J Conway,
  2. J A Bennett,
  3. A D Richardson,
  4. M D Peake
  1. University Hospitals of Leicester, Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, UK
  1. Correspondence to A J Conway, University Hospitals of Leicester, Glenfield Hospital, Groby Road, Leicester LE3 9QP, UK; alison.conway{at}uhl-tr.nhs.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/thx.2010.136788

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    We read with interest the article by Thirumaran et al.1 They described their experience of 270 consecutive patients referred with haemoptysis and a normal chest radiograph. In their study they found the incidence of respiratory malignancy within this group was 9.6% (26 individuals) and of these 22 were primary lung malignancies. This is slightly higher than the 3–6% incidence previously reported in the literature.2–4

    We have delivered a nurse-led clinic for patients referred via the 2 week wait system with haemoptysis and a normal, or non-localising, chest x-ray. Patients were stratified into high risk or low risk groups according to age and smoking history. An algorithm was then devised to guide further investigation …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.