Pulmonary eosinophilic granuloma. Its natural history and prognosis.

Abstract

Eosinophilic granuloma manifesting itself primarily as a pulmonary disease was first recognized by Farinacci (1) in 1951. Prior to that time, a few isolated cases had been described in which pulmonary involvement was observed in association with extensive lesions of other organs, but the existence of eosinophilic granuloma as a disorder which may produce its most striking-and sometimes its only-detectable changes in the lung had not been appreciated. For a time it appeared that the pulmonary variant of eosinophilic granuloma was truly a rare condition, since only five cases with lesions limited to the lungs could be found in the world literature prior to 1956 (2). However, during the past few years the tiny trickle of case reports has broadened into a riverlet which gives every indication of reaching the proportions of a flood in the very near future. Approximately fifty patients with this disease have now been described in the English literature, and ten of these cases have been added during the first few months of 1961 in reports by Mazze (3) and Williams (4) and their co-workers. These papers, along with the discussion by Auld (5) of the pathology of eosinophilic granuloma in 1957, provide the most comprehensive picture to date of the entire scope of the disease. Needless to say, eosinophilic granuloma can no longer be regarded as a rare disorder, and it is rapidly attaining a place of importance in the differential diagnosis of patients with diffuse pulmonary lesions. It is the purpose of this paper to report five additional cases of eosinophilic granuloma limited to, or principally involving, the lungs. In