Figures
- Fig. 1—
Receiver-operating characteristics (ROC) curve (•) for differential diagnosis of tumours (lung cancer and tumours with secondaries to the lung) by vascular endothelial growth factor in pleural effusions. The fitted ROC curve is represented by (––––). The graph also shows the 90% confidence interval ( - - - -) and the hypothetical ROC curve resulting from homogenous distributed data (……). These data indicate 22, 26 or 55% sensitivity at 95, 90 or 80% specificity, respectively.
Tables
- Table. 1—
Characteristics of study groups
Diagnosis Subjects n Males/females Age yrs Smoker/nonsmoker Healthy controls 20 12/8 35.1±9.6 11/9 Lung cancer 58 38/20 68.9±11.4 40/18 TM 38 11/27 67.6±14.9 6/32 Empyema/pneumonia/septicaemia 45 37/8 57.7±17.2 11/34 Tuberculosis 28 23/5 50.9±21.1 12/16 Congestive heart failure 45 19/26 70.7±9.5 22/23 Total 234 140/94 61.0±18.0 102/132 Data are presented as n and mean±sd. TM: tumours with secondaries to the lung.
- Table. 2—
Results of laboratory analysis
Controls CA TM INF TB CHF Subjects n 20 58 38 45 28 45 Percentage of exudates % 95 92 80 93 22 Leukocytes in effusion ·µL−1 6412±13702 1963±2390 5873±8975 3221±3535 330±227 Significant differences # # ¶,ƒ LDH ratio effusion/serum 3.20±7.22 1.79±1.77 6.51±11.11 1.85±1.19 0.449±0.307 Significant differences # # # # ¶,+,§,ƒ Protein ratio effusion/serum 0.657±0.212 0.690±0.213 0.497±0.165 0.723±0.136 0.318±0.143 Significant differences # # # # ¶,+,§,ƒ VEGF pg·mL−1 in serum 51±21 500±410 405±291 660±536 362±268 290±248 Significant differences ¶,+,§ ## ## ##,# # VEGF pg·mL−1 in effusion 2349±2910 2183±2648 955±1488 762±936 196±532 Significant differences §,ƒ,# §,ƒ,# ¶,+,ƒ,# ¶,+,§ ¶,+,§ VEGF ratio effusion/serum 6.17±8.16 9.48±20.8 4.46±11.38 2.93±3.46 0.849±1.32 Significant differences §,ƒ,# §,ƒ,# ¶,+ ¶,+ ¶,+ Data presented as mean±sd, unless otherwise stated. CA: lung cancer; TM: tumours with secondaries; INF: acute infections; TB: tuberculosis; CHF: congestive heart failure; LDH: lactate dehydrogenase; VEGF: vascular endothelial growth factor. Differences were significant at p<0.01 for #: versus CHF; ¶: versus CA; +: versus TM; §: versus INF; ƒ: versus TB; ##: versus control.
