Pulmonary Cavitation, Difficulty in Differential Diagnosis by X-Ray

¹ Veterans' Administration Facility, Bronx, New York.

Pulmonary cavitation is found during the course of many various illnesses affecting the lungs. Various text-books on Radiology [SEE FIGURE VII-A FIGURE VII-B IN SOURCE PDF] have attempted to describe typical lesions, using location, shape, size, number and character of the walls of the cavities as criteria. The character of the surrounding pulmonary parenchyma also aids in the differential diagnosis. A chart was made cross-indexing the causes of cavitation with these criteria for diagnosis. This chart proved helpful only in typical cases. Films are presented where similar radiographs were found in different diseases. The reason for this is that the basic cause for cavitation in all these illnesses is one and the same, namely destruction of the pulmonary parenchyma. Differential diagnosis in these cases was possible only by using all the available information, anamnesis, laboratory studies, clinical findings and serial x-rays.