Background: Patients with tuberculous or malignant pleural effusions frequently have similar clinical manifestations and pleural fluid profile. The aim of our study was to derive a simple clinical score for differential diagnosis of these two clinical entities.
Material/Methods: Our retrospective study involved 106 patients with tuberculous pleurisy and 286 with malignant effusions, seen during a 9-year period. Clinical and laboratory variables with (model 1)
and without (model 2) the addition of pleural adenosine deaminase entered into a multivariate analysis to calculate a scoring system (range 0 to 10) for the detection of tuberculous effusions.
Results: In model 1, four variables predicted a tuberculous etiology: adenosine deaminase ≥40 U/L (5 points), age

Keywords: Adenosine Deaminase - metabolism, Diagnosis, Differential, L-Lactate Dehydrogenase - metabolism, Models, Biological, Pleural Effusion - diagnosis, Pleural Effusion - metabolism, Pleural Effusion - pathology, Pleural Effusion, Malignant - diagnosis, Pleural Effusion, Malignant - metabolism, Pleural Effusion, Malignant - pathology, Tuberculosis, Pleural - diagnosis, Tuberculosis, Pleural - metabolism, Tuberculosis, Pleural - pathology