Chest
Occupational and Environmental Lung DiseaseAssessment of Hazardous Dust Exposure by BAL and Induced Sputum
Section snippets
Study Population
All patients were hazardous dust workers and were followed up periodically according to the Israeli Safety and Health at Work Regulations. They were referred for evaluation because of symptoms or radiographic findings associated with pneumoconiosis.
Group 1 (Table 1) included five patients exposed to asbestos. Patients 1 and 2 worked in a large electric power plant and were retired at the time of study. They had worked there for 23 to 43 years before their referral for evaluation. Asbestos had
Results
The demographics, history of smoking, radiologic, histologic, and functional findings in the study population are shown in Table 1. Three of five asbestos workers and 12 of 14 silica and hard-metal workers had radiologic changes typical for pneumoconiosis. Values for the diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide were significantly reduced in group 2 compared with group 1 (72.1 ± 18.0% vs 104.4 ± 8.32%, respectively; p = 0.0014). None of the patients showed side effects from IS
Discussion
This study demonstrated that samples recovered by IS in workers exposed to hazardous dust show a quantitative and a qualitative pattern similar to those of samples recovered by BAL in terms of percentage and phenotype of lymphocytes, inflammatory markers, size distribution, and types of mineral particles.
BAL, which has been used in recent years for the diagnosis of interstitial lung diseases, is an invasive procedure that requires special expertise and willingness on the part of the subjects to
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