Etiology of Pleural Effusion Diagnostic Outcome

Abstract

Pleural effusion is a common clinical and diagnostic problem. We conducted a prospective study on patients with exudative pleural fluid was analysed for protein amylase, LDH, sugar and cell cytology. We recruited 150 patient aged 18 - 80 years of either sex. All of them had pleural biopsy and pleural aspiration. On basis of pleural fluid protein analysis 147 (98%) turned out to be exudative while only 3 patients (2%) gave trasudative results. In all the patients pleural fluid LDH/serum LDH ratio was above 0.6%. In 120 patients (80%) pleural predominatly. In 67 patients (45%) histological examination of pleural biopsy revealed tuberculosis, 36 patients (24%) had metastatic carcinoma and 47 patients (31%) showed chronic non-specific pleuritis. We found that pleural effusion. there are no differentiating features on the basis of chemical analysis among various causes of exudative pleural effusion. Age greater than 50 and haemorrahgic pleural effusion (P< 0.001) was in favour of malignant pleural effusion, while positive mantoux test (P<0.001) was in favour of tuberculous pleural effusion.