A young non-smoker with high ADA pleural effusion. It's not always tuberculosis.

Lung cancer is posing an ever-increasing medical and social problem due to its increasing morbidity and mortality. Here we report a case of a young male who was being treated as tubercular pleural effusion but was ultimately diagnosed with non-small cell carcinoma. While considering the diagnosis of pleural effusion, in the context of country endemic for tuberculosis like India, it is not surprising that many clinicians rather prefer to consider pulmonary tuberculosis as the first differential, while keeping diagnosis of malignancy as the least likely differential diagnosis in the young patient.