Respiratory Rate and Diagnosis of Pleural Effusion—Reply
- Camilla L. Wong, MD, MHSc, FRCPCSt Michael's HospitalToronto, Ontario, Canada;
- Jayna M. Holroyd-Leduc, MD, FRCPCUniversity of CalgaryCalgary, Alberta, Canada;
- Sharon E. Straus, MD, MSc, FRCPC sharon.straus@utoronto.caSt Michael's HospitalToronto
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
In Reply: We concur with Dr Manning that the respiratory rate is an important component of the physical examination; it may identify patients who require more intensive monitoring or further investigation. Our search strategy in this systematic review included search terms such as vital sign, clinical observation, and mouth breathing, and also a hand-search of the bibliographies of retrieved articles. Surprisingly, we did not identify any studies meeting our inclusion and exclusion criteria that discussed the diagnostic accuracy of respiratory rate in the context of pleural effusion. This certainly would be an interesting study for patients presenting with pulmonary symptoms suspected of pleural effusion.
Financial Disclosures: None reported.
Letters Section Editor: Robert M. Golub, MD, Senior Editor.
