Chest
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Chest CT scanning has become an integral part of the workup for undiagnosed pleural effusions. We aimed to develop a CT scan-based scoring system for differentiating between benign and malignant pleural effusions. ⋯ A simple CT scan-based scoring system can help physicians to separate malignant from benign pleural effusions.
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Previous studies have investigated the relationship between occupational and environmental agents and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). However, there have been few studies regarding the prognosis of patients with IPF according to patient occupation. ⋯ These findings indicate that occupational dust may be an aggravating factor associated with a poor prognosis in IPF.
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Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a rare and ultimately fatal disorder of the pulmonary vasculature. There is increasing interest in the worldwide characteristics of patients with PAH, although data coming from the Southern Hemisphere remain scarce. The objective of this study was to describe a cohort of incident patients with PAH from a large reference center in Brazil. ⋯ The distribution of PAH causes and the baseline characteristics in our registry clearly differ from the previously published European and US-based registries. These differences highlight the importance of regional registries and also raise questions regarding the need to better account for such differences in future clinical trials.