You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Chest clinic
Images in Thorax
Benign pleural schwannoma presenting with a large, blood-stained pleural effusion
  1. Anna C Bibby1,2,
  2. Richard Daly3,
  3. Eveline Internullo4,
  4. Anthony J Edey5,
  5. Nicholas A Maskell1,2
  1. 1 Academic Respiratory Unit, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
  2. 2 North Bristol Lung Centre, North Bristol NHS Trust, Bristol, UK
  3. 3 Department of Histopathology, North Bristol NHS Trust, Bristol, UK
  4. 4 Department of Thoracic Surgery, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, Bristol, UK
  5. 5 Department of Radiology, North Bristol NHS Trust, Bristol, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Anna C Bibby, Academic Respiratory Unit, University of Bristol, Southmead Hospital, Bristol BS10 5NB, UK; anna.bibby{at}bristol.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/thoraxjnl-2017-211102

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.

    A previously fit and well 43-year-old man presented with 8 weeks of worsening breathlessness and a dry cough. He was an ex-smoker of 10 pack-years with no history of asbestos exposure, thoracic radiation or recent trauma.

    Chest radiograph and CT thorax are shown in figure 1. Pleural aspiration was undertaken and 1.5 L of blood-stained fluid was removed, with symptomatic improvement. The fluid was exudative, with lactose dehydrogenase (LDH) 437U/L (serum 374U/L) and protein 47g/L (serum 77g/L). Infection was excluded by negative microbiological culture and normal inflammatory markers. Cytology revealed numerous red blood cells, scattered lymphocytes and eosinophils, but no malignant cells.

    Figure 1

    (A) Posterior–anterior chest radiograph showing moderate left-sided pleural effusion and an indistinct opacity at the left hilum with mediastinal shift to the right. (B) Coronal CT images showing a round, encapsulated extrapulmonary mass, with cystic areas within in, surrounded by a pleural effusion. (C) Coronal positron emission tomography-CT images demonstrating high SUV uptake within …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors ACB, EI and NAM conceived the idea for the article. AJE provided the radiology images and wrote the corresponding text. EI supplied the photo in figure 2 and wrote the text regarding the surgical procedure. RD supplied the histological pictures and wrote the corresponding text. ACB wrote the rest of the article, with input and guidance from NAM. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

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