Definition
Bacterial infections of the pleura occur when bacterial organisms enter the pleural space. Bacterial infections of the pleura are more common than mycobacterial pleural infections such as tuberculosis. Fungal and parasitic infections of the pleura are rare, but can occur.
Common bacterial organisms involved in pleural infections include Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Streptococcus pyogenes, other Streptococcus spp., Actinomyces israelii, Fusobacterium nucleatum, Coxiella burnetii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Bacteroides spp., Clostridium spp., Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and Legionella pneumophila. Other rarer causes of bacterial pleural infections like Nocardia asteroides are more common in immunocompromised patients.
Just as different bacteria are associated with community- and nosocomial-acquired pneumonias, different bacterial organisms are associated with pleural infections acquired in different settings. S. pneumoniae, S. pyogenes, and S....
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References and Further Reading
Hammar, S. P. (2009). Dail and Hammar’s pulmonary pathology: Nonneoplastic lung disease (3rd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 1139–1167). Manchester: Springer. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=j-eYLc1BA3oC&printsec=frontcover&output=html_text.
Murali, R., Park, K., & Leslie, K. O. (2010). The pleura in health and disease. Seminars in Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 31(6), 649–673. 214texas.
Rosenstengel, A., & Lee, Y. C. G. (2012). Pleural infection: Current diagnosis and management. Journal of Thoracic Disease, 4(2), 186–193. https://doi.org/10.3978.
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Ruff, H. (2018). Bacterial Infections, Pleura. In: Allen, T.C., Suster, S. (eds) Pathology of the Pleura and Mediastinum. Encyclopedia of Pathology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66796-6_346
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