Do chest radiographic findings reflect the clinical course of patients with sarcoidosis during corticosteroid withdrawal?

AJR. American Journal of Roentgenology
M H BaumannS A Sahn

Abstract

The use of serial chest radiographs to assess disease activity in patients with sarcoidosis is controversial. However, reliance on the symptomatic clinical course to assess disease activity may be misleading. As many patients being treated with corticosteroids have an abrupt clinical deterioration when doses of those medications are decreased, we questioned whether the chest radiograph could depict alterations in disease activity as measured by spirometry in this subset of patients. We retrospectively reviewed the clinical course of all patients with pulmonary sarcoidosis in whom the corticosteroid dose was reduced during a 6-month period. The 15 patients without fever, chills, or purulent sputum during that time were then examined to determine the presence (n = 10) or absence (n = 5) of a symptomatic relapse. All patients who had a symptomatic relapse also had a fall in forced vital capacity of at least 10%, suggesting an increase in disease activity. Serial chest radiographs were evaluated during and after corticosteroid dose reductions and after clinical recovery on higher steroid doses in the patients who had had a relapse. In eight patients, the disease was in radiographic stage 2 (hilar adenopathy and parenchymal lung dis...Continue Reading

Citations

May 15, 2012·La Presse médicale·Robert P BaughmanKevin Gibson
Aug 28, 2004·Clinics in Chest Medicine·Sudhakar Pipavath, J David Godwin
Jan 13, 2015·Immunotherapy·Lindsay J Celada, Wonder P Drake
Apr 9, 2005·Allergy·H NunesD Valeyre
Mar 17, 2019·Clinical Rheumatology·Yi ZhengJinghong Dai
Dec 4, 2020·Thorax·Muhunthan ThillaiAthol U Wells

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