Radiology, Vol 154, 601-604, Copyright © 1985 by Radiological Society of North America
Advanced prostatic carcinoma: pulmonary manifestations
JS Apple, DF Paulson, C Baber and CE Putman
To clarify the role of standard chest radiography in prostatic
adenocarcinoma, the pulmonary manifestations of 198 patients with Stage D
disease were evaluated. All patients were treated with chemotherapeutic
protocols allowing for adequate clinical and radiographic correlation.
Retrospective interpretation of serial chest radiographs revealed that 35%
of our patients had visible intrathoracic abnormalities; however, only 24%
of the patients had abnormalities attributable to intrathoracic metastases.
Twenty-two percent of patients had pleural effusions, 16% reticular
opacities, 3.5% reticulonodular opacities, 8% isolated or discrete
pulmonary nodules, and 4.5% adenopathy. Etiologies of these opacities
included metastatic disease in 93.5% of those with adenopathy and nodular
or reticulonodular opacities, but 39% of pleural effusions and 52% of
reticular opacities were best attributed to concomitant processes. Four
patients had intrathoracic metastases without bone metastases. Standard
chest radiography is a valuable screening procedure that should be
correlated with clinical data to differentiate metastases from concomitant
processes.
