Lung disorders are the common causes of death and illness. Nearly, 1 out of 7 people are affected by some or the other form of the lung disorder throughout the world. Chronic lung diseases, like pulmonary embolism, Granulomatous Lung Disease, asthma and pneumonia. Granulomatous Lung Disease may cause long term damage to lung. This condition is due to increase in the presence of destructive circulating antibodies or antineutrophil cystoplasmic antibodies which affect medium and small sized blood vessels surrounding the lungs. This disease calls for prolonged immunosuppression and may leads to death, if untreated. The protean early manifestations of this disorder delays diagnosis and leads to subsequent delay in the treatment. Non specific nature of the symptoms makes diagnosis very difficult.
Symptoms of Granulomatous Lung Disease
Following are the signs and symptoms of Granulomatous Lung Disease:
- Scleritis
- Sensory neuropathy
- Purpura
- Arthritis
- Glomerulonephritis, that leads to renal failure
- Pulmonary hemorrhage, which leads to hemoptysis
- Subglottal stenosis
- Ulcers throughout the oral mucosa
- Strawberry gingivitis
- Hearing impairment because of dysfunction of auditory tube
- Bleeding from the nose
- Infections of the organs in ear, eye and upper airway
- Nasal congestion
- Runny nose or rhinitis, which resulted from the inflammation of mucus membrane
Diagnosis and Treatment of Granulomatous Lung Disease:
Usually, this condition is suspected after long term manifestation of unexplained signs and symptoms. Microscopy, biopsy and cytoplasmic staining are the most common diagnostic procedures performed for detecting and confirming the condition. Mainly, diagnosis is done to check the presence of granulomatous inflammation of respiratory tract and also vasculitis of the blood vessels in the affected region. It is believed that the disease is due to the result of inflammation caused by anti – neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies. This damages the endothelium, endothelial cells and arterioles. This is detected through detailed clinical analysis.
Following are the treatments for Granulomatous Lung Disease:
- Tracheotomy
- Periodical monitoring of white blood count
- Plasmapheresis, in pulmonary hemorrhage case
- Infliximab and rituximab
- Intravenous immunoglobulin
- Anti-thymocyte globulin
- 15 – deoxyspergualin
- Mycophenolate mofetil
- Methotrexate
- Azathioprine
- Corticosteroids
- Cyclophosphamide in oral and monthly intravenous doses
Studies say that Granulomatous Lung Disease affects nearly 10 – 1,00,000 people annually. This disease affects people of all age groups and about 40% of patients respond to the treatment, nearly 40 % develop anatomical problems and prolonged pulmonary complications.
