Case of the Month 26 August 2017 History: 60 year old man with cough, pleuritic chest pain and low grade pyrexia
Case of the Month 26
Case of the Month 26 What is your diagnosis ?
Case of the Month 26 August 2017 History: 60 year old man with cough, pleuritic chest pain and low grade pyrexia Question: What are the key findings on the CXR? Authors: DJ Murphy, JD Dodd, St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
Case of the Month 26 Large right sided pleural effusion
Case of the Month 26 Question: What are the key findings on CT?
Case of the Month 26 Asymmetric right-sided mediastinal pleural thickening (arrow) Anterior to the anterior cortex of the vertebral bodies Large right sided pleural effusion
Case of the Month 26 What is your differential diagnosis?
Malignant mesothelioma Case of the Month 26 Diagnosis Differential Diagnosis Pleural malignancy TB pleuritis Diagnosis Pleural Malignancy Typically either: Malignant mesothelioma Pleural metastasis
Discussion Case of the Month 26 Key features that help distinguish malignant from benign pleural disease: Circumferential pleural thickening Nodular pleural thickening Pleural thickening >1cm Mediastinal pleural involvement Cannot reliably distinguish pleural metastases from malignant mesothelioma Requires VATS biopsy for definite diagnosis of mesothelioma, core biopsy is not sufficient Not accurate if previous thoracic or cardiac surgery
Further Reading Case of the Month 26 Pleural Malignancy Leung AN, Muller NL, Muller RR (1990). CT in the differential diagnosis of diffuse pleural disease. AJR 154: 487-492. Nickell LT, Lichtenberger JP, Khorashadi L et al (2014). Multimodality imaging for the chracterisation, classification and staging of malignant pleural mesothelioma. Radiographics 34:6, 1692-1706. Halifax RJ, Haris M, Corcoran J et al (2014). Role of CT in assessing pleural malignancy prior to thoracoscopy. Thorax doi:10.1136/thoraxjnl2014-206054. Porcel JM, Pardina M, Biesla S et al (2015). Derivation and validation of a CT scan scoring system for discriminating malignant from benign pleural effusions. Chest 147(2):513-519.