Pleural Disorders - Treatment - Treatment

Your doctor may recommend medicine to treat symptoms or causes of your pleural disorder, including:

• Antibiotics, antifungals, or antiparasitic medicines to treat an infection in the pleural space or in the lung
• Corticosteroids to reduce inflammation. Corticosteroids can have serious side effects with long-term use.
• Morphine in low doses to treat chronic shortness of breath. This medicine has a risk of addiction.
• Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen to reduce pain and inflammation

Your doctor may perform one or more procedures to treat a pleural disorder. Many of these procedures are performed using ultrasound.

• Chest tube to drain fluid, blood, or air from the pleural space. This process can take several days. You may stay in the hospital while the tube is in place.
• Heimlich valve to prevent fluid and air from getting into your chest when you breathe in. Your doctor may attach this one-way valve to a chest tube or indwelling pleural catheter (IPC), which allows you to move around more and may allow you to go home to wait for your lung to re-expand.
• IPC, or indwelling pleural catheter, to drain pleural fluid. An IPC is a semi-permanent thin tube that is left in place so patients or caregivers can drain the fluid, usually a few times a week.
• Injection of medicines into the pleural space to break up material that cannot be removed with a needle or drained through a chest tube
• One-way endobronchial valve implanted in one of your bronchial tubes to allow air to exit the pleural space but not reenter
• Oxygen therapy for pneumothorax
• Pleurodesis to close up the pleural space by helping the two sides of the pleura stick together. For this procedure, your doctor will drain all of the fluid out of your chest through a chest tube. Then he or she will push a substance through the chest tube into the pleural space. The substance will irritate the surface of the pleura and cause the two layers of the pleura to stick together, preventing more fluid from building up.
• Surgery to remove fluid, pus, or blood clots that cannot be removed with a chest tube; to remove part of the pleura; to remove one or more ribs; or to close up the pleural space with a pleurodesis procedure
• Thoracentesis to remove air, blood, or other fluid from the pleural space with a needle. Possible complications include pneumothorax, pain, hemothorax and other bleeding, infection, and pulmonary edema. Complications are less likely if ultrasound is used to guide the procedure.

• Research for Your Health will discuss how we are using current research and advancing research to treat people with pleural disorders.
• Life After will discuss what your doctor may recommend, including lifelong lifestyle changes and medical care, to prevent your condition from recurring, getting worse, or causing complications.