ABSTRACT
Incidence 398 Etiology 398 Clinical manifestations 399 Characteristics of pleural fluid399 Management 399
Effusions after cardiac surgery 399 Coronary artery bypass graft surgery 399
Post-cardiac injury syndrome401 Incidence 401 Etiology 401 Clinical manifestations 401 Prevention 401 Management 401
Pleural effusion after heart transplantation 402 Incidence 402 Etiology402
Clinical manifestations 402 Characteristics of the effusions 402 Management 402
Pleural effusion after lung transplantation 402 Incidence 402 Etiology 402 Clinical manifestations and pleural
fluid characteristics 403 Management 403
Pleural effusion after liver transplantation 403 Incidence 403 Etiology 403 Clinical manifestations and pleural fluid
characteristics 403 Management 404
Future directions 404 References 404
Pleural eusion (PE) aer surgery can be dened as occurrence of a new pleural eusion following a recent surgical procedure. Although most of the pleural eusions
occur within the rst couple of days following surgery, occurrence of late pleural eusions following coronary artery bypass gra (CABG) surgery has been reported.1,2
Most of the early studies concerning postoperative pulmonary complications were carried out in a population undergoing abdominal surgery and reported a very low
prevalence of pleural eusions aer surgery.3-5 It is most likely that the low sensitivity of the diagnostic modalities used, and small sizes of the pleural eusions without clinical symptoms, were the main reasons for the low frequency of postoperative pleural eusions in these studies. e incidence of postoperative pleural eusions in more recent studies has been as high as 100% depending on the diagnostic modality used to detect the pleural eusion and the type of the surgical intervention.6
