Studies on Epidemic Influenza: Comprising Clinical and Laboratory InvestigationsUniversity of Pittsburgh. School of Medicine
History
Studies on Epidemic Influenza: Comprising Clinical and Laboratory Investigations
University of Pittsburgh. School of Medicine
Influenza; Influenza Epidemic, 1918-1919
Resolution of the other portions of the involved lobes in influenza is
not so easily accomplished. Where a progressive lesion with its
development of pus occupying both the air sacs and the tissue of the
lung, the outcome of attempts at repair are uncertain. Complete
resolution with complete disappearance of the purulent exudate may take
place as we see it in many other regions occupied by a similar reaction;
and where the purulent response is not accompanied by material damage to
the tissue the restoration of the lung is so complete that upon its
recovery no evidence is left behind of the former injury, but in as much
as the presence of a purulent reaction in the lung is often of more
severe grade than this, a certain amount of tissue destruction having
been accomplished, the repair does not completely restore the tissue to
its former normal state. The purulent lesion, however, is not uncommonly
accompanied by minute capillary thromboses, tissue derangement, organic
destruction, with even tissue alteration amounting to abscess or
gangrene, and it is too much to hope that the lung may be completely
restored. Minute abscesses varying from microscopic size to large
cavities, several centimeters in diameter, were not unusual in the
tissues severely involved in the purulent reaction. Thus in these areas,
resolution can be accomplished only by a process of slow organization of
the damaged parts with the final production of fibrosis. These fibroses
are of variable extent depending upon the initial damage. We have been
very much struck with the speed with which this process of organization
may take place and the extent of the lung tissue which may become
involved in this late lesion. In one of our cases we have evidence of
marked fibrosis present on the twenty-third day of his illness. Patches
of organization varying from one to four centimeters in diameter
occupied the different lobes of the lung. The new fibrous tissue was
well developed and the purulent reaction had largely disappeared. The
fibrosis obliterated the normal architecture of alveoli and bronchioles,
leaving only irregular islands of epithelium which assumed grotesque
glandular shapes and looked not unlike a new growth. One of the
interesting features of these late fibroses which come to occupy various
extents of the lung and bronchial tissues is that the individual after
recovering from his acute influenzal lesions again passes, in about his
third week, into a stage of dyspnœa with manifestations out of
proportion to the physical signs or constitutional derangements which
can be determined. The dyspnœa is often the outstanding sign and the
patient may die in a state of asphyxia.
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