pleural thickening on CT can indicate chronic inflammation or malignancy

• related: pleural effusion
• tags: #permanent

---

Pleural thickening can have benign or malignant causes. Benign causes are usually from chronic recurrent inflammation (e.g. empyema, hemothorax, pneumothorax), occupation related lung diseases (asbestos, silicosis). Malignant causes includes mesothelioma and pleural metastasis. ¹

²

Links to this note

• pleural effusion
  • pleural thickening on CT can indicate chronic inflammation or malignancy
• indications for diagnostic and therapeutic thoracentesis
  • Diagnostic thoracentesis is performed to find the etiology of pleural effusions. This could be for infection workup, new onset pleural effusion without explanation, thickened parietal pleural on CT scan (pleural thickening on CT can indicate chronic inflammation or malignancy), loculation or signs of empyema (simple effusion, uncomplicated, complicated parapneumonic effusion, empyema).

Footnotes

1. https://radiopaedia.org/articles/pleural-thickening?lang=us ↩

2. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/imaging-of-pleural-plaques-thickening-and-tumors ↩