日本呼吸器学会雑誌 = The journal of the Japanese Respiratory Society
巻
48
号
7
ページ
492 - 496
発行年
2010-07-01
ISSN
1343-3490
NCID
AA1119595X
出版者
日本呼吸器学会
抄録
A 39-year-old man, who had been working in an aluminum processing industry for 18 years, visited our hospital for right chest pain on March 2, 2007. A relapse of right pneumothorax was found, and he was hospitalized. As the pneumothorax did not improve with conservative treatment, video-assisted thoracoscopic biopsy and suturing of the right upper lobe were successfully performed. The pulmonary parenchyma had collapsed, there was pulmonary fibrosis, and lymphocytes had gathered in follicules. Based on elemental analysis results, we diagnosed aluminum lung. It was thought that overexpansion of the lower lobe with the predominant upper lobe fibrosis was caused by the aluminum deposition. We judged his condition to be serious and we started treatment with 25 mg/day prednisolone (PSL), and 120 mg/day cyclosporine (CyA). At the time of writing, he is an outpatient, and is being monitored on a regimen of 5 mg/day PSL and 160 mg/day CyA without any progression of pulmonary fibrosis or relapse of pneumothorax.