Sarcoidosis Involving the Pleura

Abstract

cases of pulmonary sarcoidosis finding no in-cidences of pleural effusion. Israel and Sones (2) state that "convincing evidence of pleural sarcoidosis has not been reported. " Mayock, Bertrand, and Morrison (3) report 7 cases of pleural effusion in 475 collected cases of sar-coidosis. On critical review of these 7 cases, (2, 4, 5) we note that histological confirmation of pleural sarcoidosis was not obtained. Berte and Pfotenhauer (6) present a case of sar-coidosis with pleural effusion and histologically confirmed pleural invasion and state that "review of the American literature from 1953 through 1961 failed to uncover a documented case report of pleural effusion resulting from primary sarcoidosis. " Brun, Perrin-Fayolle, Ledoux, and Biot (7) in reporting a case of sarcoidosis and massive pleural effusion state that they know of no other "documented cases" of pleural sarcoidosis. Therefore, of the nine cases in which pleural involvement has been reported, only one has had histological con-firmation. The purpose of this paper is to report two additional cases of sarcoidosis with histologically documented pleural involvement.