Pleural effusion: An “acoustic window” for sonography of pleural metastases

✍ Scribed by Christian Goerg; Wolf-B. Schwerk; Konrad Goerg; Eddy Walters

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 437 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0091-2751
• DOI: 10.1002/jcu.1870190206

✦ Synopsis

We report the sonographic findings in 32 patients with malignant disease associated with pleural effusions diagnosed by chest roentgenograms. No tumor lesions were seen in any case on X-ray films. Thoracic sonography, however, detected previously undocumented metastatic disease with diaphragmatic (N = 19), parietal (N = 8), visceral (N = 2 ) or combined (N = 3 ) pleural involvement. Additionally, a distinction could be made between nodular lesions (N = 191, sheet-like tumor masses (N = lo), and combined (N = 3 ) tumor spread. In all cases thoracentesis was performed. Cytology showed malignant cells in 28 patients. Pleural metastasis was histologically confirmed by ultrasound-guided fine needle biopsy in 2 cases. The present study demonstrates the value of scrutinized thoracic sonography in patients with pleural effusion for the detection of pleural metastases.