Letters To The Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. May 8, 2017; 9(13): 642-644
Published online May 8, 2017. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v9.i13.642
Bi-directional hepatic hydrothorax
Madhan Nellaiyappan, Anastasios Kapetanos
Madhan Nellaiyappan, Anastasios Kapetanos, Department of Medicine, Allegheny Health Network, Pittsburgh, PA 15212, United States
Author contributions: Nellaiyappan M gathered data and drafted the article; Kapetanos A critically reviewed and revised the article.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Madhan Nellaiyappan, Resident, Department of Medicine, Allegheny Health Network, 7th Floor South Tower, 320 East North Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212, United States. drnmadhan@gmail.com
Telephone: +1-412-3302400
Received: November 9, 2016
Peer-review started: November 10, 2016
First decision: December 20, 2016
Revised: March 27, 2017
Accepted: April 18, 2017
Article in press: April 20, 2017
Published online: May 8, 2017
Processing time: 179 Days and 12.8 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Hepatic hydrothorax is usually a clinical diagnosis in patients with cirrhosis and portal hypertension who present with a transudative pleural effusion. The authors herein report an interesting case of radiological confirmation of hepatic hydrothorax through a series of chest radiographs that depict the movement of ascitic fluid between the pleural and peritoneal cavities due to a iatrogenic pneumothorax.