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Letter
Chemotherapy should not be withheld from patients with an indwelling pleural catheter for malignant pleural effusion
  1. Armand Morel1,
  2. Eleanor Mishra2,
  3. Louise Medley3,
  4. Najib M Rahman2,
  5. John Wrightson2,
  6. Denis Talbot3,
  7. Robert J O Davies2
  1. 1Cancer and Haematology Centre, Churchill Hospital, Oxford, UK
  2. 2Oxford Respiratory Trials Unit, University of Oxford, Churchill Hospital, Headington, Oxford, UK
  3. 3Oxford Lung Cancer Group (OLCG), Churchill Hospital, Oxford, UK
  1. Correspondence to Eleanor Mishra, Oxford Respiratory Trials Unit, Churchill Hospital, Headington, Oxford OX3 7LJ, UK; eleanor.mishra{at}orh.nhs.uk

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A 1–12% rate of pleural infection has been observed in patients with an indwelling pleural catheter (IPC) to manage malignant pleural effusion (MPE), leading to concern that systemic chemotherapy may increase infection risk.1–5 This study aimed to determine whether chemotherapy increases the infection rate in patients with an IPC.

Data were collected from a prospectively maintained database, hospital notes and electronic records in a tertiary centre. All patients who had an IPC inserted between May 2006 and January 2010 to treat an MPE without pleural infection at the time of insertion were included. Pleural infection was defined as satisfying all of the …

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Footnotes

  • Competing interests None.

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