Abstract

YANEZ V, JORGE; GONZALEZ B, SERGIO  and  SALDIAS P, FERNANDO. Smoking related interstitial lung disease. Case report. Rev. chil. enferm. respir. [online]. 2008, vol.24, n.1, pp. 46-51. ISSN 0717-7348.  doi: 10.4067/S0717-73482008000100009.

The relationship between cigarette smoke and interstitial lung diseases (ILD) is not clear. Respiratory bronchiolitis (RB), usually found as an incidental histologic abnormality in otherwise asymptomatic smokers, is characterized by the accumulation of cytoplasmic golden-brown-pigmented macrophages within respiratory bronchioles. A small proportion of smokers have a more exaggerated response that, in addition to the bronchiole-centered lesions, provokes interstitial and air spaces inflammation and fibrosis extending to the nearby alveoli. This set of histologic changes is called RB-ILD, and it results in clinical symptoms. Desquamative interstitial pneumonia (DIP) is characterized by panlobular involvement, diffuse mild-to-moderate interstitial fibrosis, and massive alveolar filling with macrophages. It is well known that the histopathologic patterns ofRB-IID and DIP may overlap, and that the key features for differentiating these disorders are the distribution and the extent of the lesions: bronchiolocentric in RB-IID and diffuse in DIP. It has been proposed that RB, RB-IID and DIP may be different components of the same histopathologic disease spectrum, representing various degrees of severity of the same process caused by chronic smoking, although this is still controversial. To illustrate the problem, we present the clinical case of a heavy-smoker patient with progressive dyspnea and radiographic pulmonary infiltrates suggesting of smoking related interstitial lung disease

Keywords : Bronchiolitis; interstitial lung diseases; desquamative interstitial pneumonia; smoking-related interstitial lung diseases.