Korean Society of Thoracic Radiology
The Korean Radiological Society
Findings
Chest radiograph shows miliary nodular shadows in
the whole lung fields and normal heart size. Thin section CT scans show
diffuse ground glass opacity and reticular opacity in both lungs. Miliary
nodular opacities are not apparent on CT scans.
Dicussion
Cytomegaloviral pneumonia frequently occurs in immunosupressed
patients, especillay following organ transplantation. Clinical diagnosis
of CMV pneumonia is often difficult because of many other pathogens may
cause pneumonia in the immunocompromised patient and because signs and
symptoms are nonspecific. CMV pneumonitits may cause fever, pumonary infiltrates,and
hypoxia resulting in the adult respriatory distress syndrome. CMV infection
may suppress T-cell mediated immunity and may cause sever neutorpenia.
Therefore CMV infection often is associated with other pathogens including
Pneumocystis carinii, aspergillus fumigatus, and cytptococcus neoformans.
Cytomegaloviral infection has been frequently identified
in renal transplantation patients. Moore et al. in a study of patients
treated with cyclosporine-prednisone immunosuppression following renal
transplantation, found that CMV was present in 8 of 17 cases of pneumonia,
including 5 of 6 patients with diffuse pulmonary infiltrates and all 6
patients with multiple organism infection. CT findings include diffuse
interstitial / fine nodular pattern, reticulonodular pattern, mixed air
space and interstitial desease, bilateral airspace disease, masslike consolidation,
and lobar consolidation. It has been speculated that CMV infection itself
may compromise T-cell function causing further immunocompromise in this
population. It usually diagnosed by bronchoscopic biopsy and BAL and typical
cytopathologic change including cytomegalic change with intranuclear or
intracytoplasmic inclusion body is more specific than isolation of organism
by culture.
CMV is recognized as the most common viral pathogen to cause substantial
morbity and mortality in patients with AIDS. In several large autopsy series,
49-81% of patients with AIDS have evidences of CMV infection. In some series,
CMV is the most common AIDS?defining infection and the most common opportunistic
infection in the lungs. Although the identification of cytopathologic changes
of CMV in the lungs of transplant recipients is uniformly accepted as being
indicative of clinical pneumonitis, in the settings of compromised immunitiy
due to AIDS, the importance of the recovery of pulmonary CMV remains highly
controversial. The identification of pahtognomonic cells with intranuclear
or intracytoplamic inclusions is genreally considered a necessary criterion
from the diagnosis of CMV pneumonitis. The risk of CMV pneumonitis is usually
increased later in the course of disease after multiple episode of PCP
or
other pneumonias when the CD4 T-cell count below 50/mm3. CT patterns of
CMV pneumonitis in AIDS patients reflect the pathologic changes of diffuse
alveolar damage and focal interstitial pneumonitis and manifested most
commonly as mixed alveolar-interstitial infiltrate. Ground-glass attenuation,
dense condolidation, mass-lkie infiltrates are also obsereved on CT. Unlike
the CMV pneumonitis in non-AIDS patients, masses or a mass-like infiltrate
may be a sole or dominant findng in AIDS patients.
Reference
1. Moore EH, Webb WR, Amend WJC. Pulmonary infections in renal transplantation
patients treated with cyclosporine. Radiology 1988;167:97-103