Association of pleural effusion with different types of liver cirrhosis

ABSTRACT

The frequency of pleural effusion was studied in 450 patients with different types of liver cirrhosis. They comprised 322 males in the age from 15-60 years and 128 females from 13-50 years. The overall frequency of effusion among these patients was 13.33 percent. Out of the 60 patient with proved pleural effusion it was found to be right in 58.33 percent, left sided in 8.33 percent and bilateral in 33.34 percent. The effusion was found to be mostly a serous transudate [85 percent], an exudate in 6.67 percent and haemorrhagic in 8.33 percent, out of the 5 patients with left sided effusion 3 [60 percent] proved to be tuberculous and 2 [40 percent] were found to be of malignant etiology. Serous transudate was detected in right sided and bilateral effusions only and is considered to be originating from the ascitic fluid either through transdiaphragmatic lymphatics or via diaphragmatic defects. The frequency of effusion was highest in patients with advanced cirrhosis as it was 21.16 percent in stage C, 8.26 percent in stage B and nil in stage A. It is clear that, left sided, exudative or haemorrhagic effusion in cirrhotics need extensive investigations to find out the cause since most of these will be found to have specific etiology rather than cirrhosis per se