Hodgkin's Disease of the Lung

Abstract

The frequency of pulmonary involvement in Hodgkin's disease is best appreciated in statistical comparisons drawn from large series of cases. According to Versé (1), lesions within the lungs are present in about 40 per cent of all cases. Of the 18 most recently autopsied cases in the Mount Sinai Hospital pulmonary lesions were present in 9, and in 2 others lesions existed within the mucosa of the trachea and bronchi. According to F. Kraus and others, this is merely part of a generalization of a disease primarily of the lymphatic tissue (2). However, in perhaps 10 per cent or even more of the cases with pulmonary involvement the clinical and morphological evidence would seem to indicate that the disease actually began within the lung substance (1). Cases of isolated Hodgkin's disease of the gastro-intestinal tract, though infrequent, are well known (3, 4). Such observations, as well as those of isolated Hodgkin's disease of the lung, deserve special attention because of the fact that many students of the disease have come to look upon it as the manifestation of an infection whose portal of entry into the body, like that of tuberculosis, may be either the gastro-intestinal or the respiratory tract.

This and other similarities between Hodgkin's disease and tuberculosis in no way compel one to accept an etiological relationship between the two; in fact, there are many broad similarities between Hodgkin's disease and the granulomatous manifestations of syphilis as well, or of actinomycosis. These considerations are of importance, rather, in relation to the possible inflammatory nature of Hodgkin's disease, a theory which within recent years has gained many adherents both abroad and in America (5–13).