Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: EC:6.2.1.7 (BAL)
 1,977 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Patients with HES and pulmonary infiltrates may pose certain diagnostic problems as the infiltrates may be attributed to infection, infarction, congestive heart failure, or HES itself. We report an 87-year-old woman with idiopathic HES presenting with bibasal alveolar infiltrates. Differential cell count in BAL fluid yielded a very high percentage (73 percent) of eosinophils. Other authors previously mentioned the absence of eosinophils in the lavage fluid despite an important peripheral eosinophilia in a patient with the idiopathic HES but without HES-related pulmonary involvement. Thus, BAL fluid eosinophilia may suggest HES-related pulmonary involvement. Therefore, BAL might be an important diagnostic tool in the management of pulmonary infiltrates in idiopathic HES.
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PMID:Idiopathic hypereosinophilic syndrome-related pulmonary involvement diagnosed by bronchoalveolar lavage. 155 50

The literature reports many cases of eosinophilic pulmonary infiltrations, with different etiology. In our case clinical pictures were not very clear and specific at first and the clinical course was altered by an ex adjuvantibus steroid treatment before admission to hospital. It was new and unusual because it presented some characteristics of chronic eosinophilic pneumonia and idiopathic hypereosinophilic syndrome, with hepatic involvement as in the former, but without serious heart disease as in the latter. This confirms the difficulties in making a classification of the different clinical pictures because of their indistinct margins, which might appear as different forms of a single disease. In our case the patient refused transbronchial lung biopsy which is commonly considered a minimum diagnostic requirement. Some authors are not in agreement and think it is sufficient to find eosinophils in BAL to start steroid treatment, avoiding biopsy risks. Another interesting finding is the need for a long-term low-dose steroid treatment, to avoid relapses.
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PMID:[An unusual case of pulmonary infiltrates with hepatic involvement in a woman with eosinophilia]. 793 70