Chest
Lung Biopsy Specimens in the Evaluation of Pulmonary Vascular Disease
Section snippets
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The lung biopsy specimens were derived from 72 patients varying in age from 8 weeks to 63 years. In six instances, these biopsy specimens were taken during cardiac surgery, but they are included in this study because even at operation, the nature of the congenital or acquired defects remained in doubt, so that the surgical procedure had to be terminated without benefit for the patient, but in the hope that the nature of the pulmonary vascular changes in the biopsy specimen might give a clue to
RESULTS
In nine instances, no diagnostic contribution could be made because the biopsy specimens were either inadequate in size with insufficient numbers of vessels or because the vascular changes were too nonspecific for a diagnosis.
The results from the other 63 biopsy specimens have to be dealt with in relation to the problems the patients presented to the clinicians. There were essentially three indications for doing these biopsies of the lung. One group of patients suffered from unexplained
DISCUSSION
The need for preoperative morphologic evaluation of pulmonary vascular disease is limited. The cardiologist commands a wide array of clinical, hemodynamic, ECG, and echocardiographic methods for diagnosing acquired or congenital cardiac disease and for establishing the involvement of the pulmonary vasculature. Moreover, the procedure of taking an open lung biopsy specimen is not without risk, certainly not in patients with pulmonary hypertension, although in the patients of the present study,
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The technical help of Mrs. H. J. Dijk and Mr. E. M. Heeren, and the secretarial assistance of Mrs. G. A. I. Luiting, is gratefully acknowledged.
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Manuscript received March 6; revision accepted July 2.