Post Drainage NEL Detection

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    IDENTIFICATION AND PROGNOSTIC IMPORTANCE OF NON-EXPANSILE LUNG FOLLOWING DRAINAGE OF SUSPECTED MALIGNANT PLEURAL EFFUSION

  • IRAS ID

    230924

  • Contact name

    Kevin Blyth

  • Contact email

    kevinblyth@ggc.scot.nhs.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    0 years, 1 months, 5 days

  • Research summary

    Malignant pleural effusion is a collection of fluid in the chest between the lung and rib-cage caused by cancer. This often causes breathlessness and requires drainage. To prevent the fluid returning, an extra procedure called 'talc pleurodesis', or TP for short, is often performed. However, for this to work, the lung must have re-expanded after the fluid has been removed. In a quarter to one third of patients, the lung does not fully re-expand and in these patients TP will not work and should not be attempted as it carries risks of pain, infection and longer hospital stay.

    Doctors currently decide whether the lung has re-expanded by making a simple visual judgment of the chest x-ray (CXR). Since this doesn't involve any direct measurement we think it is unlikely to be the most reliable way of making this assessment. We have designed 2 new ways of measuring the amount of lung re-expansion on a CXR which will think will work better and wish to apply these measurements to old CXRs to test this theory.

  • REC name

    South Central - Hampshire B Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    17/SC/0351

  • Date of REC Opinion

    14 Jul 2017

  • REC opinion

    Favourable Opinion