Role of medical thoracoscopy in the diagnosis of pleural effusions.

Background: Medical thoracoscopy (semi-rigid and rigid thoracoscopy) have revolutionized the management of undiagnosed pleural effusions. Though semi-rigid thoracoscopy has a good diagnostic yield in malignant and tubercular effusions, its role in the management of a complicated pleural effusions is debatable. Hence, rigid thoracoscopy becomes handy in these cases.

Multidisciplinary team obviates biopsy in most patients with diffuse parenchymal lung diseases-A retrospective study from India.

Introduction: The inflammation and fibrosis in diffuse parenchymal lung diseases (DPLDs) in varied proportions give rise to different patterns in radiology and histopathology. The radiological pattern on CT of the thorax most often allows us to make a diagnosis with varying levels of confidence, to optimize management. With a multidisciplinary team bringing the strengths of their individual domains of knowledge, clinical, radiological, histopathological, and in many cases rheumatological, the level of confidence in making this diagnosis increases, often to the stage where the diagnosis is most often right, is concordant with the diagnosis achieved at histopathology and therefore obviates the need for lung biopsy which carries its own costs and risks of complications.

Role of medical thoracoscopy in the treatment of complicated parapneumonic effusions.

Objective: The role of medical thoracoscopy in the treatment of pleural infections is increasingly being recognized. This study was done to assess the role of medical thoracoscopy in the management of carefully selected subset of patients with complicated parapneumonic effusions (PPEs).

Materials And Methods: We analyzed retrospective data of 164 thoracoscopic procedures performed at our center on patients with complicated PPE in the past 10 years.

Yield of pleural biopsy in different types of tubercular effusions.

Introduction: The yield of mycobacteria is shown to be very low in pleural effusions as it is a pauci-bacillary disease. The present study looked at the yield of mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) in terms of GeneXpert for acid fast bacilli (AFB) and culture using a medical thoracoscopy guided biopsy and analysed whether the yield increases in more complicated effusions.

Materials And Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of patients who underwent medical thoracoscopy for tubercular pleural effusions at our institute over the last 5-years.

Cryobiopsy of the Pleura: An Improved Diagnostic Tool.

Background: Medical thoracoscopy (rigid and semirigid pleuroscopy) has revolutionized the approach to the diagnosis of pleural disease by offering a very high diagnostic yield. Rigid pleuroscopy offers the advantages of therapeutic intervention and larger biopsy specimens, whereas semirigid pleuroscopy using a standard biopsy forceps yields smaller and more superficial pleural samples. Cryobiopsy through semirigid pleuroscope in anecdotal studies has been used to overcome these disadvantages.