4: What is ‘ultrasound’?
Ultrasound is a simple scan that is done on the chest to determine how much fluid is present and what the fluid looks like. It is the same scan we use for pregnant women. It is much better than a chest X-ray at showing if there is any fluid there and how much there is.
The scan involves putting some jelly on the skin over the ribcage and then a probe made of plastic used to scan the fluid and lungs through the jelly. Ultrasound is completely safe and causes no harm, and has no radiation unlike other sorts of scans (like CT scans). Doctors and nurses use it a lot in people with fluid in the chest to tell them how much fluid there is and what is best to do next.
The most important use of ultrasound is to make any of the procedures as safe as possible. The ultrasound tells the medical team exactly where the fluid is in the chest and so exactly where the best place to do the drainage is.
4: What is ‘ultrasound’?
Ultrasound can show what the fluid look likes. This might sound a strange thing to say but fluid in the chest can be different in different people. In some people the fluid is one big collection of fluid and is very easy to drain away if this is the case. However, sometimes the fluid can become divided into lots a small pockets of fluid. This happens when solid strands or ‘webs’ form in the fluid. Doctors called this a ‘septated pleural effusion’. This can make it very difficult to drain the fluid away and sometimes it is best to try different ways of helping the symptoms.
Top tip: It is important that doctors and nurses always perform an ultrasound before deciding how best to treat a malignant pleural effusion. Patients with a malignant pleural effusion could ask their doctors whether or not they have a septated pleural effusion.
The next part of this website will talk about the different ways of draining the fluid of a malignant pleural effusion. It will also ask patients and carers to start thinking about what the most important aspects of their treatment are and how this might affect what type of treatment would suit their needs the most.