ABSTRACT
Pharmacokinetics is the study of the quantitative pattern and time course of drug disposition in the body after administration by any route. Pharmacodynamics in turn deals with concentration-effect relationships. To elicit a desirable pharmacological action requires delivering the appropriate concentration of drug to a specific site of action (1). For this purpose, drug pharmacodynamic studies can provide important information to maximize the clinical efficacy of pharmacological agents as well as to minimize their toxicity. In the case of pleural disease, the targeted sites of drug action are the pleural tissue and the pleural fluid. Thus, achieving a clinical relevant pharmacological response depends on the delivery of the drug to the pleural tissue and fluid in sufficient concentrations. However, the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs in human pleural tissue and fluid have rarely been studied. For example, in the case of pleural infections the role of pleural tissue or pleural fluid antibiotic concentration has been minimally investigated. The limited data available, in support of the importance of the pharmacokinetics of antibiotics in pleural tissues, are mainly derived from experimental animals (2).
