Pulmonary Function Studies in Patients With Bilateral Sarcoidosis of Hilar Lymph Nodes

Abstract

WE HAVE been struck by the fact, emphasized by Bates and Christie,¹ that abnormalities of pulmonary function, particularly of diffusion, are extremely common in sarcoidosis, and that these abnormalities may be present in the absence of, or after the disappearance of, roentgenographic evidence of parenchymal disease of the lung. In order to document this impression, we studied pulmonary function in 18 patients with bilateral hilar adenopathy in whom there was no parenchymal infiltration on x-ray films of the chest. Follow-up studies of pulmonary function were carried out in ten patients over a two-month to five-year period. Clinical Material Eighty patients with sarcoidosis were studied in the pulmonary function laboratory from 1956 to 1965. Eighteen of these patients showed bilateral hilar lymphadenopathy but no parenchymal infiltration on x-ray films of the chest at the time when the pulmonary function studies were performed. There were 17 females and one male; eight