Active clinical trials for "Pleural Effusion"

Although being a frequent and lethal complication in patients (pts) with hematologic malignancies, diagnosing invasive aspergillosis (IA) still remains a difficult issue as culture-based methods show low sensitivity especially under the current clinical practice of antifungal prophylaxis or rapid antifungal therapy. In certain clinical settings, performing biopsies for identification of the underlying infectious organism becomes important. However, as culture-based methods only yield results in a minority of patients, using non-culture-based methods like Aspergillus specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for detection of IA directly in clinical specimens is becoming increasingly important and might help to characterize the causative pathogen. Therefore the performance of an established Aspergillus-specific nested PCR in biopsies, re-section material or pleural effusions is evaluated.

The purpose of the current study is to establish a Liquid biopsy method (positive enrichment by a novel immunomagnetic beads capture assay) for detection of malignant cell in serous effusions and to evaluate its sensitivity and specificity for clinical application.

Up to 20 patients with malignant pleural effusions will be interviewed about their experiences of having this condition and its management.

Diagnostic accuracy of biomarker testing (galactomannan (GM), (1

The aim of this study is the feasibility assessment of a simple and affordable model for the quantification of Pleural Effusion through thoracic Ultra Sounds images. Two US scans will be performed to measure: the height of Pleural Effusion column (hPEUS) and the area of the effusion in correspondence of the midline of hPEUS (aPEUS). The proposed model will estimate the Pleural effusion volume (PEVUS) by multiplying hPEUS and aPEUS. PEVUS will be compared with volumes estimated by CT scans (PEVCT), obtained within 24h from the US examination.

The physiologic basis for relief from dyspnea after therapeutic thoracentesis remains poorly understood. Improvement of the heart and lung function may contribute to the dyspnea relief. But there is no data support this phenomenon. Transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE) is a non-invasive viewing of the heart, which can quickly assess the heart function through real-time images. The investigators performed thoracentesis on patients with large-volume pleural effusions, and utilized TTE to access the change of heart and lung function before and after this medical procedure.