Thoracic endometriosis with catamenial haemoptysis and pneumothorax: computed tomography findings and long-term follow-up after danazol treatment

Thitiporn Suwatanapongched, Viboon Boonsarngsuk, Naparat Amornputtisathaporn, Paisan Leelachaikul
Singapore medical journal · 2015 · vol. 56(07) , pp. e120–e123 · doi:10.11622/smedj.2015115 · PMID:26243981 · W1576120866
article OA: diamond CC0 ⤵ 10 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

Thin-section CT scans accurately diagnosed thoracic endometriosis in two women with catamenial hemoptysis and pneumothorax, with danazol treatment leading to a complete cure in one and long-term management in the other.

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, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

This case report series describes two women of childbearing age with thoracic endometriosis—one with catamenial haemoptysis alone and another with bilateral catamenial pneumothorax occurring with catamenial haemoptysis—using thin-section computed tomography timed during and after menstruation to localize disease and distinguish it from other causes. In case 1, CT showed a small right lower lobe cystic lesion in the intermenstrual period that developed surrounding ground-glass opacity during menses, and after danazol treatment her symptoms fully resolved, though recurrence occurred when danazol was stopped before later successful long-term dosing; in case 2, CT on day 2 of menstruation revealed multiple small cystic lesions and multifocal nodular ground-glass opacities without alternative etiologies, and after danazol she had an incomplete cure with relapse after stopping and after pregnancy, requiring long-term treatment. The authors emphasize that biopsy confirmation is often not feasible and that bronchoscopic findings may be negative, making imaging—especially detecting lesion change across the menstrual cycle—central to diagnosis, while acknowledging that CT findings are nonspecific. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it reports thoracic endometriosis diagnosed and followed using menstrual-cycle–timed CT and describes danazol responses in cases of catamenial haemoptysis and pneumothorax, directly relevant to endometriosis.

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

Abstract

Thoracic endometriosis (TE) is an uncommon disorder affecting women of childbearing age. We herein report clinical and thin-section computed tomography (CT) findings of two cases, in which one woman presented with catamenial haemoptysis (CH) alone and another woman presented with bilateral catamenial pneumothoraces (CP) coinciding with CH, a rare manifestation of TE. The dynamic changes demonstrated on thin-section chest CT performed during and after menses led to accurate localisation and presumptive diagnosis of TE in both patients. Following danazol treatment, the patient with CH alone had a complete cure, while the patient with CP and CH had an incomplete cure and required long-term danazol treatment. We discuss the role of imaging studies in TE, with an emphasis on the appropriate timing and scanning technique of chest CT in women presenting with CH, potential mechanisms, treatment and patient outcomes.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

mesh:D004715endometriosisthoracic_endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Danazol Endometriosis Hemoptysis Pneumothorax Adult Biopsy Danazol Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Follow-Up Studies Hemoptysis Hemoptysis Humans Menstruation Pneumothorax Pneumothorax Tomography, X-Ray Computed Treatment Outcome

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 (16)

Cited by (10)

SciLite annotations

organisms 5
homo heidelbergensis homo heidelbergensis noordeloos 2009062 noordeloos 2009062 ammonia-oxidizing bacterium
chemicals 6
danazol danazol danazol gadolinium prostaglandin danazol

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-04T01:30:01.192114+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:17:46.044120+00:00
scilite
last seen: 2026-05-18T04:25:29.313245+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK