Radiation-induced telangiectasia in the brain simulates cryptic vascular malformations at MR imaging.

Purpose: To analyze the magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, clinical, and pathologic features of radiation-induced telangiectasia of the brain.

Materials And Methods: The clinical and radiation therapy records were reviewed of 20 patients who developed focal hypointense lesions on T2-weighted MR images obtained after radiation therapy of the central nervous system. Pathologic material was reviewed in six patients.

Lupus-related myelitis: serial MR findings.

Purpose: To correlate the MR findings in transverse myelitis secondary to systemic lupus erythematosus with clinical findings during disease exacerbation and remission.

Methods: Four patients (ages 33 to 47 years) with episodes of transverse myelitis secondary to systemic lupus erythematosus were identified. Three patients had recurrent transverse myelitis episodes (one patient with two recurrences), for a total of eight episodes.

Asbestos exposure in buildings.

Asbestos-related diseases are dose-related. Among these, asbestosis has occurred only with the heavy exposures of the past, is a disappearing disease, and is of no concern with the very small exposures from building occupancy. A possibly increased incidence of lung cancer has been included in risk analysis, but probably is also related to high exposure in that both epidemiologic and experimental data suggest a link between the process of alveolar inflammation and fibrogenesis and carcinogenesis.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in asbestos-exposed workers.

Diffuse interstitial lung disease in asbestos-exposed workers is presumed to represent asbestosis. Among 176 asbestos-exposed persons for whom lung tissue was available, we found nine with clinical features consistent with asbestosis, but histologic sections failed to demonstrate asbestos bodies, the usual requirement for pathologic diagnosis of asbestosis (Group I). These nine were compared by analytic electron microscopy with nine persons with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (Group II), and with nine persons with all the criteria of asbestosis (Group III).