Pleural Effusions in Hematologic Diseases – A Narrative Review

Background: Pleural effusions frequently occur in hematologic disorders. The diagnosis of this entity is extremely challenging, as traditional techniques, such as pleural fluid cytology and pleural biopsy, have a low diagnostic yield. In addition, a growing number of evidence suggests that the appearance of a pleural effusion leads to a worse prognosis. The aim of this work is to provide a non-systematic review of haematological pathologies more frequently associated with a pleural effusion, the diagnostic challenges and treatment options. Methodology: This revision work is the result of a critical analysis of the existing literature, carried out by collecting the main bibliographic entries in different languages present in international scientific databases relative to the topic of interest. All the arguments have been elaborated by the authors and critically re-proposed, in a non-systematic way (narrative revision).