Tuberculous chylothorax in paediatric population-a case report and systematic review of the literature.

Background: Chylothorax as part of the clinical spectrum of tuberculosis (TB) is a rare entity, especially among children. However, it is crucial for clinicians to be able to identify, correlate, and diagnose chylothorax as it poses significant morbidity to patients. Case Description: We report on a paediatric case of pleural TB complicated with complex chylothorax, and systematically reviewing the literature for cases of tuberculous chylothorax among children particularly looking at the (I) demographic, (II) clinical presentations, (III) radiological findings, and (IV) investigations among this cohort of patients. The systematic review complied to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. We used three separate databases, namely PubMed, Ovid, and Scopus to search for articles with terms "chylothorax", "tuberculosis", and "children". We included article reporting on: (I) children aged below 18; (II) infected by Conclusions: Most of the cases showed similar clinical presentation, radiological findings, and laboratory investigations particularly the classic analysis findings of pleural fluid. Even though TB is not a common cause of chylothorax, clinicians should have raised suspicion of it especially after gathering full history and correlating it with the other findings.