Measurement of Distance from Skin to Pleural Cavity in Interscapular Intercostal Space

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to measure the skin-pleura distance (SPD) of interscapular intercostal space and to correlated SPD with the individual constitutional data such as body-weight, height, obesity and body mass index (BMI; kg/m2). METHOD: We examined 50 patients (36 men and 14 women) who had no pathological abnormality in interscapular intercostal space. We measured the SPD in chest CT (GE sytec 3000i) study and also measured individual constitutional data of patients. RESULTS: The average age of the subjects was 47.0+/-15.3 years, average weight was 59.0+/-9.7 kg, average height was 167.0+/-8.7 cm, average obesity was 98.4+/-14.9%, average BMI was 21.1+/-3.2 kg/m2 and average SPD was 3.7+/-0.7 cm. There was no correlation of statistical significance between SPD, height and age. But there were statistically significant correlations between SPD, weight, obesity and BMI (p<0.01). Linear regression analysis of these data showed significant correlations between SPD and weight (p<0.01, y=0.109x-2.744), obesity (p<0.01, y=0.092x-5.367) and BMI (p<0.01, y=0.380x-4.301). CONCLUSION: We conclude that the approach considering the correlations between SPD and obesity or BMI will be helpful in reducing pleural puncture during any injection on interscapular intercostal space.