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If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The Hepatic hydrothorax is a pleural effusion related to portal hypertension; its diagnosis and therapeutic management may be difficult.
The aims of this article are which follows: To gather the practices of hepatogastroenterologists or pulmonologists practitioners regarding the diagnosis and management of the hepatic hydrothorax. Practitioners from 13 French- speaking countries were invited to answer an online questionnaire on the hepatic hydrothorax diagnosis and its management. The results of this large study provide important data on practices of French speaking hepatogastroenterologists and pulmonologists; it appears that recommendations are warranted.
The Hepatic hydrothorax HH is defined by the presence of a pleural effusion of a transudative nature greater than ml secondary to some portal hypertension in a cirrhotic patient, in the absence of any causes of cardiopulmonary or malignant origins [ 1 ].
The poor tolerance of the HH makes its therapeutic management difficult, which can be a source of iatrogenic complications [ 1 β 4 ]. The treatment of HH is mainly determined by whether or not a liver transplantation is feasable [ 2 , 5 , 6 ]. The mechanism of the HH formation is related to a unidirectional transfer of abdominal ascites to the pleural cavity through diaphragmatic breaches [ 4 ].
