Percutaneous catheter drainage of pleural effusion and empyema

Image-guided percutaneous drainage of thoracic empyema: Can sonography predict the outcome?

“…The advantages of IGPCD in patients with empyema, both as a primary procedure as well as after failure of ICTD, have been extensively discussed in the literature [4,5,6,7,8,9]. In our study we achieved an overall success rate of 78.4 %, similar to the success rates of 72±92 % in various smaller series reported previously.…”

“…Various complications of IGPCD, such as hemorrhage due to intercostal vessel injury, pneumothorax, subcutaneous emphysema, and catheter-related pain, have been reported [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. We did not encounter any major complications in our series.…”

“…Image-guided percutaneous catheter drainage (IG-PCD) provides direct demonstration of the fluid collection and has been shown to be a safer and more effective alternative to ICTD [1,4,5,6,7,8,9]. In our institute, we now routinely perform IGPCD for thoracic empyema.…”

Treatment of pleural effusions and pneumothorax with catheters placed percutaneously under imaging guidance

“…In the case of empyemas, the range is 35-80% [7]. This compares with 72-88% for catheters placed percutaneously under sonographic or CT guidance [3,4,8]. The 86% we achieved in the final year of our study compares favorably with these results.…”

Comparison of closed-chest drainage with rib resection closed drainage for treatment of chronic tuberculous empyema

“…However, a number of studies showed that the internal diameter of the indwelling catheter in internal drainage was related to the efficacy of treatment. Meanwhile, they suggested that the use of image guided small bore catheters could have a good outcome, therefore, it was acted as a primary drainage procedure or a rescue treatment when larger tubes had failed (28)(29)(30)(31)(32). Therefore, we thought that the thickness of pleural should not be considered as only one factor for surgery or not.…”