Clinical Aspects of Pulmonary Asbestosis

Our plain-English summary of Clinical Aspects of Pulmonary Asbestosis, by T. Oliver (British Medical Journal, 1927).

The study

• Author: T. Oliver
• Journal: British Medical Journal
• Published: 1927;2(3491):1026-7
• Cited by: 15 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 003121).

In plain English

This 1927 article was a brief clinical account rather than a group study. The author described two women with pulmonary asbestosis, aged 48 and 39, examined with Dr. Grieve. The article did not name the type of asbestos. The older woman had been among the first to start at her factory thirty years before. She had stopped work a year earlier because of debility, breathlessness and cough; her sputum, tested six weeks earlier, had no tubercle bacilli. The younger woman had worked with asbestos for eighteen years and lost 3 stone in two years; her sputum was also negative for tubercle bacilli. The author wrote that the disease clinically resembled silicosis. Because fibrotic changes were developing in both women, the author thought pulmonary tuberculosis was almost sure to develop in them, if not already present. The author added that it differed from ordinary lung tuberculosis in skin discoloration, breathlessness in excess of the physical signs, greater disability, little sputum and comparative absence of night sweats. The author also believed several deaths of British asbestos workers had probably been certified as pulmonary tuberculosis.

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 commentary with descriptions of two patients (case reports)
• Who was studied: two women with pulmonary asbestosis, aged 48 and 39, asbestos factory workers in Britain, examined with Dr. Grieve of Armley (Leeds)
• Exposure: work in a British asbestos goods factory, where the author described carding and spinning of the fibre as employing many women. The fiber type and the two women's specific jobs are not stated. The younger woman had worked with asbestos for eighteen years, and the older woman began work at the factory thirty years earlier.
• Main results:
  • The 48-year-old woman gave up work a year earlier because of increasing physical debility, shortness of breath and cough.
  • The 48-year-old woman's respiratory capacity was one inch.
  • Sputum from the 48-year-old woman, present six weeks earlier, was found free of tubercle bacilli.
  • The 39-year-old woman weighed 8 stone, a drop of 3 stone within the last two years.
  • The 39-year-old woman's sputum was negative for tubercle bacilli.
  • The author described pulmonary asbestosis as differing from ordinary lung tuberculosis in, among other things, shortness of breath in excess of the physical signs and a greater amount of general disability.
  • The author believed that several deaths of British asbestos workers from the disease had probably been certified as pulmonary tuberculosis, because no autopsy and microscopic examination of the lungs was made.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that, clinically, pulmonary asbestosis resembled silicosis. Because fibrotic changes were developing in both of these patients, the author concluded that pulmonary tuberculosis was almost sure to develop in them, if it had not already.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Asbestosis.

Related studies

• Clinical aspects of pulmonary asbestosis — A.C. Haddow (1929)
• The relative importance of clinical, radiological and pulmonary function variables in evaluating asbestosis and chronic obstructive airway disease in asbestos workers — G.M. Regan, B. Tagg, et al. (1971)
• Clinical and radiological criteria for the differential diagnosis between asbestosis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: Application in two cases — A. Stufano, A. Scardapane, et al. (2021)
• Clinical aspects of asbestos-related diseases--what are the unresolved topics? — D.E. Banks (2014)
• Surgical and pathologic aspects of asbestosis — W.F. Sasser, W.A. Bari (1981)
• Identifying the pulmonary hazard of high aspect ratio nanoparticles to enable their safety-by-design — K. Donaldson, F. Murphy, et al. (2011)

Browse more research in British Medical Journal, or return to medical research.