Clinical analysis of 56 cases of occupational pulmonary thesaurosis induced by dust of iron and its compounds / 中国职业医学

ABSTRACT

Objective: To analyze the clinical characteristics and imaging features of occupational pulmonary thesaurosis induced by dust of iron and its compounds (OPTIDIC). Methods: A total of 230 cases of occupational welder's pneumoconiosis (OWP) patients or observation subjects were selected as the research subjects using the retrospective analysis method. They were diagnosed in four occupational disease diagnosis institutions in Shandong Province from 2010 to 2017. The high kV X-ray chest radiography or chest digital radiograph (hereinafter referred to as X-ray) were re-read to screen OPTIDIC patients. The clinical data of OPTIDIC patients were collected and analyzed. Results: Among the 230 cases, 56 cases were diagnosed as OPTIDIC, accounting for 24.3%. The clinical symptoms of the 56 patients with OPTIDIC were cough, sputum, chest tightness, shortness of breath, and difficulty breathing, while their physical signs were low or coarse breath sounds in lungs and others. Most of the X-ray results showed p shadows or q shadows, accounted for 98.2%, of which p/p shadow and q/q shadow accounted for 62.5%. The result of chest computed tomography (CT) showed diffuse point/round shadow and diffuse glass shadow in OPTIDIC patients. The result of fibro-bronchoscopy showed that a large amount of iron lutein particles was accumulated in macrophages and biopsy of lung showed idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis in OPTIDIC patients. Conclusion: The clinical characteristics of OPTIDIC patients showed no different from OWP. However, the result of X-ray of OPTIDIC patients mainly showed small circular shadows, and their CT images mainly showed diffuse point/round shadows or grinding glass shadow, which could be used to the differential diagnosis of OPTIDIC and OWP.