Pleural metastatic tumours and effusions. Frequency and pathogenic mechanisms in a post-mortem series

Abstract

We examined the post-mortem records of 191 patients who had one or more malignant tumours (196 neoplasms in total). We found 55 cases with pleural metastases (28%) and 30 of these presented pleural effusions (15% of the total number of neoplasms). The visceral pleural was involved in all 24 cases of lung cancer with pleural metastasis and in 27 out of 31 of those of other origins. The parietal pleura was affected in 16 out of 24 cases of the lung tumours and in 15 out of 31 of those of other origins. There were no cases in which only the parietal layer of the pleura was involved, with the only exception of neighbouring tumours. We found neoplastic vascular invasion in 43 out of 55 cases, retrograde lymphatic spread from the mediastinum in two cases, and direct pleural involvement from a neighbouring tumour in the remaining. We conclude that malignant pleural implantation fundamentally arises from the spread of tumour emboli to the lungs and the visceral pleura, with secondary seedings to the parietal pleura. Therefore, this phenomenon leads to the usual finding of lower involvement of parietal pleura as compared to the visceral pleura in our series.

A randomized controlled trial comparing indwelling pleural catheters with talc pleurodesis (NVALT-14)

“…Approximately 15% of cancer patients develop symptomatic malignant pleural effusion (MPE) [1] and the prevalence of MPE is increasing [2]. MPE may cause a variety of symptoms [3], of which dyspnea is the most common.…”

Predictive value of SUVmax in visceral pleural invasive lung adenocarcinoma with different diameters

“…SUVmax has been proved to be closely related to tumor diameter [18]. The size of LA tumor is also strongly associated with occurrence of VPI.…”

“…Meanwhile, further studies have proved that SUVmax was strongly relevant to LA-VPI. That is the greater the 18F-FDG uptake, the higher the tumor proliferation and invasion [15][16][17][18]. We divided all patients into VPI-n and VPI-p groups to compare their SUVmax values.…”

The randomised thoracoscopic talc poudrage+indwelling pleural catheters versus thoracoscopic talc poudrage only in malignant pleural effusion trial (TACTIC): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

“…Malignant pleural effusion (MPE) occurs when cancer metastasises to the pleura (most commonly from lung cancer in men and breast cancer in women) or in mesothelioma, when the pleura itself is the primary site of malignancy 1 2. It is common, with 50 000 new cases per year in the UK3 and incidence is likely to rise as global cancer rates increase 4.…”