Unilateral hyperlucent hemithorax – when one side of the chest is more lucent (black) than the other on a frontal chest radiograph. There are many potential causes including a few tricky ones. Some important things to consider:
- rotated patient – can create a dramatic density difference
- chest wall soft-tissue differences - particularly mastectomy (left image)
- pneumothorax – always important! (right image)
- air-trapping – particularly inhaled foreign bodies (check valve effect)
- reduced lung vascularity – eg. pulmonary embolism (Wetermark’s sign)
- contralateral increased density – eg. pleural effusion on other side
from our tumblr blog
http://radiologysigns.tumblr.com/
