Use of pleural fluid ceruloplasmin in the differentiation of exudative and transudative pleural effusion

摘要

Background:Differentiating into transudate or exudate is the first step in the evaluation of effusions. Light's criteria is the standard but a significant number of transudates may not be differentiated based on these criteria. Acute phase proteins (APP) are present in plasma, which increase or decrease by about 25% during an acute inflammatory response. Ceruloplasmin (CP) is a positive APP. Hence, this study was done to know the diagnostic value of pleural fluid (pf) CP and pf to serum ceruloplasmin ratio (CPr) to differentiate the pleural effusion (PE) into exudate and transudate as compared to Light's criteria.