Catamenial Pneumothorax

D A Mikroulis; D. Mikroulis; V N Didilis; V. Didilis; F Konstantinou; G H Vretzakis; G. Vretzakis; G I Bougioukas; G. Bougioukas

doi:10.1055/s-2006-924707

Catamenial Pneumothorax

D A Mikroulis, D. Mikroulis, V N Didilis, V. Didilis, F Konstantinou, G H Vretzakis, G. Vretzakis, G I Bougioukas, G. Bougioukas

The Thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon · 2008 · vol. 56(06) , pp. 374–375 · doi:10.1055/s-2006-924707 · PMID:18704865 · W4238099598

article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 4 in-corpus citations

Full text JSON View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher

⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This case report describes a 35-year-old woman with recurrent pneumothorax linked to her menstrual cycle, which was found to be caused by thoracic endometriosis and diaphragmatic fenestrations.

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

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 · read from full text ⓘ

This paper is a brief article describing catamenial pneumothorax, a rare condition occurring in women typically in their 3rd or 4th decade and within 72 hours of menstruation. It notes that the pathogenesis is not fully understood, and that most cases are associated with thoracic endometriosis and/or diaphragmatic lesions. It states that hormonal suppressive therapy and surgical treatment are the two therapeutic options, while the main limitation is the incomplete understanding of underlying mechanisms. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it discusses catamenial pneumothorax as usually associated with thoracic endometriosis and diaphragmatic lesions occurring around menstruation.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Catamenial pneumothorax is a rare entity of spontaneous, recurrent pneumothorax occurring in synchrony with the menstrual cycle. The etiology is not completely known, but in most cases it is associated with thoracic endometriosis and/or diaphragmatic fenestrations. We report a case of a 35-year-old woman with three episodes of catamenial pneumothorax. The surgical findings were thoracic endometriosis and diaphragmatic holes. She underwent resection of the affected part of the diaphragm and pleurodesis via a mini-thoracotomy and videothoracoscopy assistance.

Full text 2,084 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · 2 sections · click to expand

Introduction

Catamenial pneumothorax (CP) is a rare clinical condition and its pathogenesis is not fully understood. It is usually right sided, involves women in the 3rd or 4th decade of life and occurs within 72 h of menstruation. In most cases it is associated with thoracic endometriosis and/or diaphragmatic lesions. Hormonal suppressive therapy and surgical treatment are the two therapeutic options.

References

- 1 Korom S, Canyurt H, Missbach A, Schneiter D, Kurrer M, Haller U. et al . Catamenial pneumothorax revisited: clinical approach and systematic review of the literature. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg. 2004; 128 502-508 - 2 Bagan P, Barthes F, Assouad J, Souilamas R, Riquet M. Catamenial pneumothorax: retrospective study of surgical treatment. Ann Thorac Surg. 2003; 75 378-381 - 3 Funatsu K, Tsuru M, Hayabuchi N. Catamenial pneumothorax and its relation to the peritoneal stomata of the diaphragm. Chest. 1999; 116 1843 - 4 Foster D C, Stern J L, Buscema J, Rock J A, Woodruff J D. Pleural and parenchymal endometiosis. Obstet Gynecol. 1981; 58 555 - 5 Shearin R PN, Hepper N GG, Payne W S. Recurrent spontaneous pneumothorax concurrent with menses. Mayo Clinic Proc. 1974; 49 98-101 - 6 Rossi N P, Goplerud C P. Recurrent catamenial pneumothorax. Arch Surg. 1974; 109 173-176 - 7 Joseph J, Sahn S. Thoracic endometriosis syndrome: new observations from an analysis of 110 cases. Am J Med. 1996; 100 164-169 - 8 Alifano M, Roth T, Broet S C, Schussler O, Magdeleinat P, Regnard J F. Catamenial pneumothorax: a prospective study. Chest. 2003; 124 1004-1008 - 9 Alifano M, Magdeleinat P, Regnard J F. Catamenial pneumothorax: some commentaries. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg. 2005; 129 1199 MD Dimitrios Mikroulis University Hospital of Alexandroupolis Dragana area Alexandroupolis, PC 68100 Greece Phone: + 30 25 51 07 41 66 Fax: + 30 25 51 07 41 64 Email: [email protected]

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Condition tags

endometriosisthoracic_endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Diaphragm Endometriosis Menstruation Pneumothorax Thoracic Diseases Adult Diaphragm Diaphragm Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Humans Pneumothorax Pneumothorax Pneumothorax Recurrence Thoracic Diseases Thoracic Diseases

Citation neighborhood (sparse)

Too few in-corpus citations on either side for a chart; here are the lists.

Cited by (4)

Source provenance

europepmc: last seen: 2026-06-20T06:14:18.781669+00:00
openalex: last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
pubmed: last seen: 2026-05-13T22:14:30.652814+00:00

License: CC0 · commercial use OK