Clinical long-term outcome of non-specific pleuritis (NSP) after surgical or medical thoracoscopy.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Thoracoscopy, either "medical" or "surgical", is the gold standard to reveal the cause of pleural effusion by taking large biopsies. However, in some cases, the histology of pleural biopsies is inconclusive for a specific cause, describing a variable process of inflammation, encompassing for non-specific pleuritis (NSP). Questions are raised whether the surgical (or video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, VATS) is doing better than the medical thoracoscopy (MT or pleuroscopy), but no direct comparison between the two techniques exist in the current bibliography. The aim of our retrospective study was to compare these two techniques to find whether there is any difference in the false negative cases of NSP.

Methods

We included in our study 295 patients with NSP, 179

SUBMITTER: Karpathiou G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7330408 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature