Skip to main content
The Egyptian Journal of Bronchology
Download PDF

A solitary anthracotic lower lobe lung mass mimicking lung malignancy: an unusual presentation

Egyptian Journal of Bronchology volume 10, pages 82–84 (2016)Cite this article

Abstract

Pneumoconiosis in coal workers is seen as small nodular aggregations of anthracotic macrophages in the collagen network, which are known as coal macules, with larger aggregations known as coal nodules/mass with or without fibrosis. These are usually seen around the initial site of coal dust accumulation that is the upper regions around respiratory bronchioles; however, in our case the anthracotic mass is present in the anterior basal segment of the lower lobe of the left lung. Although coal workers’ pneumoconiosis is a form of pneumoconiosis that is a common affliction of coal workers and/or chronic smokers. In our patient, prior exposure to biomass fuel exhaust seems to be the only risk factor. We present the case of an 80-year-old man presenting with fever and cough of 4 months’ duration. On evaluation, he was found to have a well-defined mass lesion in the anterior basal segment of the lower lobe of the left lung, which on core biopsy revealed features consistent with an anthracotic mass.

References

  1. Petsonk EL, Attfield MD. Diseases of the lung and pleura: coal workers pneumoconiosis and other coal-related lung disease. In: Rosenstock L, Cullen MR, eds Textbook of clinical occupational and environmental medicine, 1st ed. Philadelphia, PA: W B Saunders Co.; 1994:274–287.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Husain AN, Kumar V. Lung. In: Kumar V, Abbas AK, Fausto N, eds Robbins and Cotran pathologic basis of disease. 7th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders; 2004:733–734.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Tan BB, Flaherty KR, Kazerooni EA, Iannettoni MD. The solitary pulmonary nodule. Chest 2003;123:89S–96S.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Gould MK, Fletcher J, Iannettoni MD, Lynch WR, Midthun DE, Naidich DP, et al. Evaluation of patients with pulmonary nodules: when is it lung cancer?: ACCP evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. Chest 2007; 132:108S–130S.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Ost D, Fein AM, Feinsilver SH. The solitary pulmonary nodule. N Engl J Med 2003; 348:2535–2542.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Balmes JR, Speizer FE. Occupational and environmental lung disease. In: Longo DL, Fauci AS, Kasper DL, Hauser SL, Jameson JL, Loscalzo J, eds Harrison’s principles of internal medicine. 18th ed. USA: McGraw Hill Professional; 2012:2121–2129.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Green FH, Vallyathan V. Coal workers’ pneumoconiosis and pneumoconiosis due to other carbonaceous dusts. In: Churg A, Green FHY, eds Pathology of occupational lung disease. 2nd ed. Philadelphia, PA: Williams and Wilkins; 1998:129-208.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of General Medicine, Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences, Gangtok, Sikkim, India

    Amit K. Jain MBBS & Parvati Nandy

Authors
  1. Amit K. Jain MBBS
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Parvati Nandy
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amit K. Jain MBBS.

Additional information

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.

Rights and permissions

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Jain, A.K., Nandy, P. A solitary anthracotic lower lobe lung mass mimicking lung malignancy: an unusual presentation. Egypt J Bronchol 10, 82–84 (2016). https://doi.org/10.4103/1687-8426.184359

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.4103/1687-8426.184359

Keywords