Asbestos and the lung

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos and the lung, by M.M. Dunn (Chest, 1989).

The study

• Author: M.M. Dunn
• Journal: Chest
• Published: 1989;95(6):1304-8
• Type of article: Case report, Review
• Cited by: 7 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 000073).

Summary of the article

This article was a clinical conference presented at Internal Medicine Grand Rounds at Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago. It opened with a patient presentation and then reviewed asbestos-related lung disease. The patient was a white man whose age is illegible in the text. He had worked for 18 years in the "shingle and flex board" division of a major asbestos manufacturing corporation. He had dyspnea on effort, fine crackles, clubbing, a restrictive pattern on pulmonary function tests, a diffusing capacity of 50 percent of predicted, and pleural calcifications and interstitial infiltrates on chest radiograph. He was diagnosed with asbestosis, retired, and died of respiratory failure about five years later. The discussion covered asbestosis, bronchogenic carcinoma, benign pleural effusions and plaques, and mesothelioma, including their clinical features, diagnosis and proposed mechanisms of disease, such as oxygen radicals and iron in the fibre. The author stated that smokers had a tenfold excess risk of lung cancer and that asbestos exposure combined with smoking increased the risk 60-fold. He reported that malignant cells were found in pleural fluid in less than 20 percent of mesothelioma patients and that survival beyond three years was unusual. He concluded that asbestosis had no specific treatment, that steroids were not recommended, and that prevention and stopping smoking were the best measures. He added that lessons from asbestos should be kept in mind when developing replacement fibres.

PubMed has no abstract for this study, and the article doesn't print one. We wrote this summary from the full article with the help of AI. It is not the authors' wording.

In plain English

This article was a clinical conference given at Internal Medicine Grand Rounds at Northwestern University Medical School. It presented one patient's case, then reviewed asbestos-related lung disease using earlier published work. The patient was a white man (his age is unreadable in the scanned text) who had worked for 18 years in the "shingle and flex board" division of a major asbestos manufacturing corporation. His lung function tests showed a restrictive pattern, with a diffusing capacity of 50 percent of predicted. His chest radiograph showed pleural calcifications and interstitial infiltrates. Pulmonary asbestosis was diagnosed from his clinical presentation and exposure history. His symptoms progressed over five years, and he died of respiratory failure. Citing other studies, the review stated that asbestos exposure and cigarette smoking act synergistically in causing bronchogenic carcinoma (lung cancer). It also stated that mesothelioma can occur after minimal asbestos exposure and is not associated with smoking. The author described these disorders as models for other fibrotic and malignant lung diseases.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Clinical conference (grand rounds): a single case presentation followed by a narrative review of asbestos-related lung disorders, based on previously published studies
• Who was studied: One white man (age unreadable in the OCR text) who worked in the "shingle and flex board" division of a major asbestos manufacturing corporation
• Exposure: 18 years of work at an asbestos manufacturing corporation, in the shingle and flex board division; no fiber type is given for the patient
• Main results:
  • The patient's pulmonary function tests showed a restrictive pattern
  • The patient's diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide was 50 percent of predicted
  • The patient's chest radiograph showed pleural calcifications and interstitial infiltrates
  • The diagnosis of pulmonary asbestosis in the patient was based on his clinical presentation and exposure history
  • The patient's symptoms progressed over five years until he died of respiratory failure
  • Review statement drawn from cited literature, not from this case: the relative risk of lung cancer with asbestos exposure was given as two to three times that of the general population, with a tenfold excess risk for smokers and a 60-fold risk for the combination
  • Review statement drawn from cited literature: mesotheliomas also occur after minimal asbestos exposure and are not associated with cigarette smoking
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that although many asbestos-related disorders will eventually be eliminated, they serve as models of other fibrotic and malignant lung disorders, and that lessons from asbestos should be kept in mind when developing replacement fibers

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Asbestosis.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Dyspnea, Clubbing, Pulmonary Function Test (PFT), Diffusing Capacity (DLCO), Pleural Calcification, Interstitial, Chest X-Ray, Bronchogenic Carcinoma.

Related studies

• Recommendations for the Diagnosis and Management of Asbestos-Related Pleural and Pulmonary Disease — C. Diego Roza, M.J. Cruz Carmona, et al. (2017)
• Imaging of the pleura — N.L. Müller (1993)
• Pleural calcification, pleural mesotheliomas, and bronchial cancers caused by tremolite dust — S. Yazicioglu, R. Ilçayto, et al. (1980)
• Asbestos: when the dust settles an imaging review of asbestos-related disease — H.D. Roach, G.J. Davies, et al. (2002)
• Effects of asbestos in dockyard workers — G. Sheers, A.R. Templeton (1968)
• Asbestos-related focal lung masses: manifestations on conventional and high-resolution CT scans — D.A. Lynch, G. Gamsu, et al. (1988)

Browse more research in Chest, or return to medical research.