Chest
Clinical InvestigationsChronic Eosinophilic Pneumonia: A Long-term Follow-up of 12 Patients
Section snippets
METHODS
Twelve patients diagnosed as having CEP and currently attending the respiratory clinic at St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland, were reviewed. The diagnosis was based on classic symptoms, blood eosinophilia, characteristic radiographic findings, and a rapid response to corticosteroid therapy. Parasitic infestations were excluded in all cases and no patient had ingested any drug known to produce a blood eosinophilia. No patient had vasculitis or a malignant neoplasm at diagnosis nor did any
Clinical
These data are summarized in Table 1. All patients were female. All 12 had been well before presentation apart from four who had mild asthma for 1, 5, 8, and 23 years, respectively, before the onset of the present illness. One patient had nasal polyps removed in the past and all but one (case 6) were nonsmokers. The presenting complaints were as follows: cough/sputum (ten patients), weight loss (eight patients), wheeze (six patients), dyspnea (six patients), night sweats (six patients), and
DISCUSSION
Chronic eosinophilic pneumonia is a distinct clinical entity, the classic presenting features having been first described by Carrington et al1 in 1969 when they reported on nine patients with this rare disorder. The early course of this illness has now been well documented,1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 but the long-term outcome has not been defined. There have been only two intermediate follow-up studies of this disorder.2, 3 Pearson and Rosenow2 followed up eight patients for an average of 6 years while
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