Chest
Clinical InvestigationsSmall Airways Dysfunction in Systemic Sclerosis: A Controlled Study
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
Thirty-one nonsmoking consecutive patients (28 female, three male) with definite progressive systemic sclerosis according to the American Rheumatism Association criteria13 were studied. All the patients satisfied the single major criterion for classification of definite progressive systemic sclerosis (proximal scleroderma). The 31 patients were classified as having diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis or the limited cutaneous form of the disease according to the classification of LeRoy.14 All
Results
Twenty-eight out of the 31 patients were women. The mean age ± SD of the patients was 51.5 ± 13.4 years (range, 18 to 64 years) and the mean duration of the disease was 6.4 ± 4.6 years (range, 1 to 20 years). Twenty (18 female, 2 males) of 31 patients were classified as having diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis, while the remaining 11 (10 female, 1 male) patients had the limited cutaneous form of the disease.
Thirteen (42 percent) of 31 patients had a history of dyspnea on exertion and/or
Discussion
Changes in pathologic findings of large and small airways have been reported in patients with scleroderma, but the prevalence and significance of functional abnormalities in the small airways have not been defined unequivocally. During the last years, high prevalence of SAD has been reported occasionally in scleroderma.7, 8, 10 However, most of the related studies are not controlled and include smoking patients, which probably affects the reported prevalence.11 Therefore, using the pulmonary
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