Abstract
Purpose: assessing manifestations of sarcoidosis in chest CT to make clinicians and radiologists consider this disease in daily practice.
Material and methods: CT and HRCT scans of 59 patients with biopsy-proven sarcoidosis were reviewed.
Results: Many of the classical findings including bilateral hilar and paratracheal adenopathy and parenchymal involvement like bronchovascular bundle thickening, nodularity, fibrobronchiectatic and fibrocavitary changes affecting upper and middle zones as well as pleural thickening were noted as previously mentioned by others.
But what highlights our study, is the interesting uncovering of 30.5% unilateral and 45.8% bilateral asymmetric parenchymal involvement, also scattered parenchymal metastasis-like nodules (20.3%), Patchy ground glass opacities mimicking BOOP (33.9%), the galaxy nodular pattern (11.9%) and enlargement of main pulmonary artery (23.7%).
parenchymal manifestations have been shown in Fig-1.
In addition to the usual widely known mediastinal lymphadenopathy stations, we found a considerable amount of involvement in subcarinal (55.9%), paraesophageal (22%), and 6.8% intraparenchymal lymph nodes and the least common pulmonary ligament lymph nodes (1.7%).
Conclusion: sarcoidosis can present with unusual findings in uncommon sites so whenever looking at a pulmonary CT we should ask: “Am I dealing with sarcoidosis?
- © 2012 ERS
