[Surgical pleural biopsy]

The authors emphasize on the importance of histologic study of the sick pleura to obtain a diagnosis and to decide the treatment, operative or not, which must be specific. They choose the surgical biopsy and analyze the results obtained in 104 operations performed on 100 patients. Four groups of lesions are established: 1) malignant tumors (primary and secondary), 2) Non specific pleuritis consecutive to carcinoma of the lung or other organs, usually metastatic from the breast or the digestive tract, 3) Non specific pleuritis, and 4) Tuberculosis. Cancer or tuberculosis are found in pleurisies of different types. Cancer was found in a 43,7% of the serous pleurisies, in a 64% of the seroushemorrhagic, and in a 46% of the hemorrhagic pleurisies. Tuberculosis was found in a 15,6 % of the serous, in a 7,14 % of the seroushemorrhagic and in a 15,7 % of the purulent. In one case of hemorrhagic pleurisy in which the diagnosis of tuberculosis was not made, further studies confirmed it. The authors point to the existence of non specific pleuritis without neoplastic infiltration in some pleurisies consecutive to lung tumors or from other organs and to its therapeutic consequences. They also inform having found tuberculosis in patients over 50 years of age (8 in 11 cases). In this series the youngest pleural cancer case was a 27 years old man.