Unexpandable lung in an elderly Nigerian woman

Abstract

Unexpandable lung is a complication of lung diseases resulting in the inability of the lung to expand to the chest wall due to a variety of lung parenchymal and pleural pathologies. We present the case of an elderly woman with chronic empyema thoracis with failure of lung re-expansion following chest tube drainage.

Keywords

• lung entrapment
• pleural manometry
• trapped lung
• unexpandable lung