Bronchial involvement in pulmonary sarcoidosis.

It is probable that the lung is one of the commonest sites of involvement by sarcoidosis. In spite of the rapidly growing literature on the subject there is scanty mention of the disease affecting bronchi. This can be attributed to the fact that routine bronchoscopic and bronchial biopsy investigations have not been carried out in pulmonary sarcoidosis. In the study described in this paper an attempt was made to find out the frequency of bronchial disease in pulmonary sarcoidosis and to assess the value of bronchoscopic biopsy as a diagnostic procedure. The cases investigated complied with the definition of the U.S. National Research Council as quoted by Ricker and Clark (1949). All had histological evidence of epithelioid cell tubercles without central caseation (non-caseating tubercles) and with or without Langhans type giant cells. At the same time no tubercle bacilli could be grown from cultures of the sputum or cultures of lymph node tissue and no tubercle bacilli were seen on histology.