The Demographic, Clinical, Radiographic and Bronchoscopic Evaluation of Anthracosis and Anthracofibrosis Cases

Background: The aim of the study was to evaluate the demographic features, clinical findings, radiological and bronchoscopical findings of patients with bronchial anthracosis. Methods: Among 1541 patients who underwent broncoscopy in our bronchoscopy unit between 2006-2008, 104 patients with anthrocosis were included in this prospective study. The patient’s geographical location, occupation, type of fuel used for cooking in the kitchen and for heating in their house, admission complaints, chest x-ray and thorax computed tomography (CT) findings, bronchoscopic images and the accompanying pathological diagnosis were recorded and evaluated. Results: A total of 104 (6.7%) patients with a mean age of 61.35±13.34 years were included in this study; 49 (47.1%) of which were female, 55 (52.9%) male.The most common complaints were cough, dyspnea and sputum production in 71.2%, 57.7% and 49.0% patients, respectively. In 48 (46.1%) patients history of cigarette smoking was found. While in 31 (38.3%) patients exposure to mineral dust or biomass in their job was observed, 37 (45.7%) patients were housewives. In all of the patients biomass exposure was found because of the fuel used for heating or in kitchens. Regarding geographical location, we found that the majority of the patients (38.5%) were from Black Sea region located in northern Anatolia. While the most common chest x-ray findings were consolidation (51.9%) and fibrosis (18.3%), consolidation (38.5%) and fibrosis (36.5%) were also found to be the leading thorax CT findings. The most common bronchoscopic findings were bilateral anthracosis, stenosis and bronchial torsion 67.3%, 40.4% and 23.1% patients, respectively. Among the anthracosis patients, with bronchoscopy 11 of them were found to have malignancy and 7 of them tuberculosis. Conclusion: Large scale, country-wide studies should be conducted for the determination of epidemiological data of bronchial anthracosis and anthracofibrosis in our country in which a high rate of biomass exposure is found. *Corresponding author: Sevda Sener Comert, Pembe kosk sok. Emek apt. No:16 D:14 Kadikoy Istanbul/Turkey, Tel: 00 9021 6350 5187; Fax: 00 9021 6442 1884; E-mail: [email protected] Received December 22, 2011; Accepted March 24, 2012; Published March 26, 2012 Citation: Comert SS, Dogan C, Caglayan B, Fidan A, Kiral N, et al. (2012) The Demographic, Clinical, Radiographic and Bronchoscopic Evaluation of Anthracosis and Anthracofibrosis Cases. J Pulmonar Respirat Med 2:119. doi:10.4172/2161105X.1000119 Copyright: © 2012 Comert SS, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.