Lung Manifestations of Chronic Infections: A Diagnostic Review
Keywords:
Infection, Pulmonary, Diagnosis, Parasites, TuberculosisAbstract
Introduction: The human pulmonary system can be affected by various infections, which can enter the lungs during the migration phase of their life cycle, travel there by embolic spread or direct invasion, or be a primary infestation or a feature of more generalized disease. These findings can mimic tuberculosis, sarcoidosis, or metastatic disease. This review aimed to identify radiological manifestations related to chronic bacterial, parasitic and viral infections.
Methods: A systematic review of the medical literature was conducted by searching PubMed up to January 2022 using the MeSH terms and keywords. The references of the retrieved articles were also manually searched. Only original papers in English or Italian discussing latent and post-primary TB imaging and diagnosis, with a focus on TB reactivation in patients receiving biologics, were included. The remaining papers were analyzed based on the relevance of their title or abstract.
Results: A total of 105 papers were identified in a literature review, of which 93 were initially excluded as not relevant based on their title or abstract. After further review, 12 papers were selected for inclusion. Previous research has found that chest radiography has a sensitivity of 73-79% and a specificity of 60-63% for detecting latent tuberculosis (TB) in high-risk populations. Eosinophilic lung diseases are a group of conditions characterized by an accumulation of eosinophils (a type of white blood cell) in the lungs.
Conclusions: There are several conditions that can cause transient pulmonary opacities or increased opacity in the lungs, including bronchiectasis, bronchial asthma, and bronchial granulomatosis. In order to accurately diagnose parasitic infections, it is important for healthcare providers to be familiar with the common parasites in their region.
