A unique case of thoracic endometriosis syndrome and pulmonary Langerhans’ cell histiocytosis: Six recurrent pneumothoraces

Varun Gupta, Ka-Won Noh, Ka‐Won Noh, Hansjörg Maschek, H. Maschek, Stefan Thal, Stefan Welter
Respiratory medicine case reports · 2022 · vol. 36 , pp. 101603 · doi:10.1016/j.rmcr.2022.101603 · PMID:35242517 · PMC8866092 · W4212927685
article OA: gold CC0
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This case report describes a 33-year-old woman experiencing six recurrent pneumothoraces, ultimately diagnosed with thoracic endometriosis syndrome and pulmonary Langerhans' cell histiocytosis.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Spontaneous pneumothorax (SP) in women of reproductive age with causes such as thoracic endometriosis syndrome (TES) presents a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. A 33-year-old women was treated conservatively with chest tube insertion for a first occurrence of a right-sided pneumothorax in September 2015. In January 2016, a right-sided video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) wedge resection and partial parietal pleurectomy was performed due to a recurrence. A right-sided VATS was again performed in December 2016 with multiple wedge resections and a total pleurectomy revealing a pulmonary Langerhans' cell histiocytosis (PLCH) in the histological and immunohistochemical examinations. The patient was recommended an abstinence of smoking and further course was unremarkable until May 2019, when due to a recurrent pneumothorax, she received a talc pleurodesis via right-sided VATS. Due to yet another recurrence, she underwent a talc slurry pleurodesis over a right sided chest drain. In March 2020 due to recurrence, a right-sided VATS was performed and a blueish nodular lesion was resected from the diaphragm. The histological examination revealed an endometriosis with a diagnosis of TES. Since the patient did not exhibit a temporal relationship between her periods and the onset of pneumothorax symptoms, a final diagnosis of non-catamenial endometriosis-related pneumothorax was made. The patient is currently continuing smoking abstinence and is under hormone therapy. She has not presented with a recurrence. In clinical practice, it is important not to just relay on the information available to us, but to reevaluate the patient history to uncover new clues leading to a new diagnosis.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosisthoracic_endometriosis

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (26)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-19T06:14:56.452680+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:23:57.700195+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK