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Introduction: Malignant pleural effusion (MPE) of primary lung cancer or metastatic is an advanced Stage 4 disease with reduced survival, so palliation is the treatment goal. Pleurodesis with cytotoxic drug Bleomycin, causes the pleural space to obliterate due to intense brotic reaction and prevents recurrence of pleural effusion.Objectives: to assess the efcacy of local intra-pleural therapy with injection Bleomycin as a sclerosing agent in the management of patients with MPE and to assess the relief of symptom in them. Methods: An observational study was conducted from July, 2021 to December, 2021 in the Department of Radiation Oncology, Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) Hospital, Imphal, Manipur. This study was conducted among 10 MPE symptomatic patients attending Radiation Oncology OPD, RIMS Imphal. Age, sex, primary tumours, symptoms, pleural effusion grades, etc. were the variables. Data collected were analyzed using SPSS-version-21. Summarization of data was carried out by using descriptive statistics such as mean, median, standard deviation and percentages. Results: Out of 10 symptomatic patients with MPE. Only 5 patients were treated with chemical pleurodesis, with assessment on month 1 and 3 after the removal of ICD. The overall success was 100% in the study, with no respiratory symptom at 3-month assessment. Few complications like fever, pain and infection at ICD site were encountered which were relieved in next 2-3 days with proper medication. Conclusion: Bleomycin is a safe and effective chemical for pleurodesis thereby preventing the recurrence of PE. The advantages of doing bedside ICD followed by chemical pleurodesis was to decrease the time gap between the diagnosis of MPE & putting an ICD tube, cost effectiveness, less reliance on respiratory physician or cardiothoracic specialist, prevention of trapped lung syndrome and faster improvement in Quality of life.
Miachieo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.