Association of Left Pleural Effusion with Pericardial Disease

Abstract

DURING cardiac failure unilateral pleural effusions tend to be right-sided, and bilateral pleural effusions tend to show more fluid on the right.1 We tested our impression that the opposite is true for pericarditis — i.e., that unilateral pleural effusions tend to be left-sided and bilateral effusions larger on the left — by reviewing patients with pericardial disease, who were subdivided to reflect pericardial and cardiac factors that may have been related to production of pleural fluid. Among 35 patients with pericardial disease and pleural effusion, we found that the pleural effusion was predominantly right-sided in only three and solely or . . .