الفهرس 
Anatomy of the PleuraOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Thoracoscopy has long been established as the procedure of choice in various chest diseases among which is undiagnosed pleural effusions where it allows visualization of the pleural cavity including the diaphragmatic, visceral pleura and the lung. The procedure does not only give information on the extent of the disease itself but allows adequate tissue biopsy sampling.
This study was conducted prospectively on 50 patients with unexplained exudative pleural effusion referred for medical thoracoscopy at Abbassia chest hospital. This study included 32 males & 18 females, with a mean±SD age (54.22 ± 9.8) year.
The aim of the present study was to detect outomes and complications of medical thoracoscopy in undiagnosed exudative pleural effusion
The enrolled patients were subjected to:
1. Thoracoscopy which was performed under local anaesthesia (single entry technique).
2. All apparently abnormal (suspicious) areas seen were biopsied for histopathological examination.
from the present study, the following results were obtained:
Medical Thoracoscopy is a safe and valuable tool for diagnosis of undiagnosed pleural effusion, particularly for patients with high probability of malignancy. Overall cost effectiveness of thoracoscopy is better in view of its better yield and lesser duration of hospital stay.
Medical thoracoscopy gave a definitive diagnosis in 50 out of 50 patients with diagnostic yield 100%.
Histopathological results of thoracoscopic pleural biopsy among the study population revealed the most common diagnosis was malignancy (92%), followed by chronic non specific pleurisy in (4%), then tuberculous pleurisy in (2%), and fibrotic pleurisy in (2%).
The most common malignant pathological type was malignant pleural mesothelioma (60%), followed by metastatic adenocarcinomain (12%).
According to residence of studied patient we found environmental exposure to asbestos has relationship with mesothelioma in patients live in the neighborhood of these asbestos factories as Shoubra elkhiema and Helwan.
Medical Thoracoscopy is a safe, has no major cmplications as no post-thoracoscopic complications (90%) while minor complication have occurred only in (10%) , in the form of: (4%) developed surgical emphysema ,(4%) developed cellulitis (drain site) which was transient and controlled and (2%) developed bronchopleural fistula.