Chest
Clinical InvestigationsThe Relationship between Pleural Fluid Findings and the Development of Pleural Thickening in Patients with Pleural Tuberculosis
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
Between January 1986 and January 1988, 71 patients with pleural tuberculosis were seen at the Hospital das Clinicas of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil). All patients who had either a pleural biopsy specimen showing granulomas with caseous necrosis and/or pleural fluid or pleural tissue positive on culture for Mycobacterium tuberculosis were included in the study. Forty-four patients returned to follow-up after 6 to 12 months and these patients form the study
Results
The clinical characteristics of the 23 patients with and the 21 patients without residual pleural thickening were quite similar (Table 1). The mean ages and hemoglobin levels were nearly identical in the two groups. There was no significant difference in the fraction of patients with fever, weight loss, chest pain, night sweats, dyspnea, or cough in the two different groups, although the group that was left with residual thickening did have a slightly longer duration of symptoms and slightly
Discussion
The present study demonstrates that there is approximately a 50 percent incidence of residual pleural thickening when chemotherapy is completed for pleural tuberculosis. The incidence of residual thickening does not appear to be related to the initial biochemical findings in the pleural fluid or the clinical characteristics of the patients at the time of presentation. Moreover, the incidence of residual thickening was not related to the chemotherapeutic regimen or the performance of a
Acknowledgments
We thank the following physicians who took care of the patients in the Ambulatory Clinic of Tuberculosis of the Hospital das Clinicas-Faculty of Medicine-University of Sao Paulo: Eliane C. R. Follador, Fernanda M. V. Boueri, Loavo M. Leite, Teresa Y. Takagaki, and Ronaldo A. Kairalla. We thank Marian Berman for her assistance with the medical illustrations.
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Manuscript received December 20; revision accepted March 12.