TREATMENT OF MALIGNANT PLEURAL EFFUSION-Reply

To the Editor:— It was because of our unsatisfactory experience with the use of colloidal radioactive gold and chemotherapeutic agents that we adopted the procedure of talc poudrage. In our hands, recurrent pleural effusions due to malignant pleural tumors by repeated thoracentesis and installation of chemotherapeutic agents were eliminated in only about 50% of the patients. On the other hand, as we reported in our article, we have never failed to eliminate such effusions by talc poudrage.