CHEST
Volume 119, Issue 3, March 2001, Pages 964-966
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Selected Reports
Somatostatin in the Treatment of Chylothorax

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A case report is presented of spontaneous chylothorax successfullytreated by conservative means. The helpful role of the inhibitorypeptide, octreotide, is discussed.

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Case Report

A 79-year-old woman was admitted to St. Mary Hospital inHoboken, NJ, complaining of progressively debilitating weakness and dyspnea. Her non-Hodgkin's lymphoma had been in remission with chemotherapy of f and on for > 8 years. She admitted having a heavysensation in her chest. She was alert, and the only physical findingswere the absence of breath sounds and dullness to percussion on theleft chest. On chest radiography, she had almost complete opacificationof the left hemithorax. Laboratory

Comment

It has been a decade since the arrest of lymphorrhagia in the neckwas observed after the use of somatostatin.3 Nine yearslater, chylothorax was treated by the somatostatin analog, octreotide, in a 4-month-old boy.4 It took 2 days for the lymphorrheato stop in the first patient and 11 days in the second patient. In ourpatient, the lymphorrhea stopped by the third day.

When thoracic duct ligation was first proposed in 1948, the mortalityassociated with chylothorax was reduced from 50 to 15%.1Most

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