BORDERLINE ALLERGY: ITS RELATION TO HYPERPLASTIC DISEASE OF THE RESPIRATORY TRACT

Abstract

The difficulties in properly evaluating the symptoms and pathologic picture of hyperplastic disease of the respiratory tract have resulted in a regimentation which falsely groups the borderline cases in classifications which belie their allergic nature. Physicians have been taught to recognize allergy only by the classic symptoms of obstruction and watery discharge and by the pathologic findings of eosinophilia, edema or extreme grades of hyperplasia. They have entirely forgotten that in the nose, as everywhere else in the body, different symptom complexes exist which are dependent on the degree of pathologic change or the constitutional makeup of the individual at a particular time. Rackemann¹aptly voiced this in the following comment: ... There are many gradations between those not sensitive at all, and those extremely sensitive. In the middle ground, there are people who are slightly sensitive to one thing or, usually, . . . to a variety of things. I think