Author/Editor		Bitenc, M
Title		The influence of diagnostic mediastinotomy on the development of citologically positive pleural effusion in patients with lung cancer
Type		članek
Source		Zdrav Vestn
Vol. and No.		Letnik 62, št. Suppl 2
Publication year		1993
Volume		str. 3-8
Language		eng
Abstract		Background. In the study the influence of diagnostic mediastinotomy on the development of citologically positive pleural effusion in patients with carcinoma of the lung is evaluated. The study examines 188 patients who were treated for lung cancer at the Departement of Thoracic Surgery in Ljubljana from 1986 to 1987. The evaluation was made in 181 patients who underwent thoracotomy. Seven of those 188 patients had to be exempted from thoracotomy because of the findings of the preoperative staging. Methods. With statistic analyses (chi-square test KaplanMeier method of survival rate, Mantel-Cox test for the comparison of survival curves), the group of patients who were mediastinotomized in the course of preoperative staging was compared with the group that was not mediastinotomized. Results. The study showed that preoperative mediastonotomy provoked the development of pleural effusion, the sample of which was never citologically positive. Some samples of pleural effusions of patients in whom preoperative mediastinotomy was performed were citologically suspicious. The fact that findings of those patients were in fact negative was confirmed by survival of those patients, which was no shorter than the survival of patients with negative citological findings. Conclusions. The results of the study show that preoperative mediastomy in patients with lung cancer, if correctly indicated, is an advantageous diagnostic method, because it reduces the number of patients. Since in mediastinotomized patients the selection for operability is subjected to stricter criteria, we can say that the patients who were determined for surgery also by this diagnostic method have better expectancy for survival.
Descriptors		MEDIASTINOSCOPY PLEURAL EFFUSION LUNG NEOPLASMS SURVIVAL RATE