PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Cornel Savu
AU  - Cornel Petreanu
AU  - Vasile Grigorie
AU  - Nicolae Galie
AU  - Emilia Tabacu
TI  - Value of the video assisted thoracoscopy in the diagnosis of the pleural effusions – Our experience
DP  - 2011 Sep 01
TA  - European Respiratory Journal
PG  - p450
VI  - 38
IP  - Suppl 55
4099  - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/38/Suppl_55/p450.short
4100  - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/38/Suppl_55/p450.full
SO  - Eur Respir J2011 Sep 01; 38
AB  - Introduction: Pleural effusions are a common and significant clinical problem. The diagnosis required sometimes the practice of the thoracoscopy to biopsy the pathological pleura. Also, this method is utilized in treatment of different effusions like debridement of the empyema, pleurodesis in the malignant effusions. Also, it permets to etablish if an effusion pleural is neoplasic or paraneoplasic, with consequence of the surgical traitement.Material and method: The work presents our experience with this method in the last two years. We retrospectively reviewed 131 patients (82 males, 49 females, mean rage: 62 years). The indications of videoassisted thoracoscopy are presented in table no.1 and 2.View this table:Table 1. Malignant pleural effusion 71,75% (94 cases)View this table:Table 2. Benign pleural effusion 28,24%Aditionaly, we performed a minithoracotomy or thoracotomy for 26 cases. Mean period of hospitalisation was 4,2 days.Results: The benefits of this method are obvious, with hospitalization cost smaller and with discharge of the patient faster.Conclusions: The videoassited thoracoscopy is an indispensable method of diagnosis of pleural effusions.