RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The utility of ultrasound-guided thoracentesis and pleural biopsy in undiagnosed pleural exudates
JF Thorax
JO Thorax
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and British Thoracic Society
SP 995
OP 997
DO 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2014-206567
VO 70
IS 10
A1 Koegelenberg, Coenraad Frederik N
A1 Irusen, Elvis Malcom
A1 von Groote-Bidlingmaier, Florian
A1 Bruwer, Johannes Willem
A1 Batubara, Enas Mansour A
A1 Diacon, Andreas Henri
YR 2015
UL http://thorax.bmj.com/content/70/10/995.abstract
AB We assessed the utility of ultrasound to guide the selection of closed pleural biopsy technique and site and to assess the respective contributions of repeat thoracentesis and closed pleural biopsy in 100 consecutive patients with undiagnosed pleural exudates. Thoracentesis was more likely to be diagnostic in TB than malignancy (77.8% vs 31.0%, p<0.001). The addition of ultrasound-guided biopsy increased the combined yield for all diagnoses from 48.0% to 90.0% (p<0.001), for malignancy from 31.0% to 89.7% (p<0.001) and for TB from 77.8% to 88.9% (p=0.688). Our findings suggest that this minimally invasive approach has a high diagnostic yield.