Date: 23 January 2014
A 43 year old with smoking related emphysema was admitted to hospital with two separate episodes of haemoptysis. He had been in good health up to 1989, when he was diagnosed as having bilateral pulmonary tuberculosis. At that time a CT scan revealed a cavity in the left upper lobe (20.8cm2) with adjacent confluent infiltrates and pleural thickening. On bronchoscopic examination no abnormalities were noted and endobronchial biopsies did not reveal hyphae.
Over the next 4 years his condition deteriorated and a CT scan showed the left upper lobe cavity had increased to 40cm2. Itraconazole 400mg daily was prescribed. There was some clinical improvement on itraconazole but patient eventually deteriorated with breathlessness and with significant weight loss.
Copyright: n/a
Notes:
Images library
-
Title
Legend
-
Mucous containing Charcot-Leyden crystals, stained with H & EA 57 year old woman presented with breathlessness. She had a history of mild asthma for which she occasionally took salbutamol inhaler puffs. The patient underwent a pneumonectomy because of the severity of her disease process, and uncertainty about the diagnosis, prior to serology results being obtained.Serology showed an IgE of 2600, with a strongly positive Aspergillus RAST test and weakly positive Aspergillus precipitins. Material re