17322              FOCAL EMPHYSEMA WITH ANTHRACOSIS AND SILICOSIS

The patient was a man aged 83 who had worked underground in the mines at Broken Hill for 40 years. He was admitted with a brief history of cough, chest pain and breathlessness with signs of chronic bronchitis and emphysema. X-ray showed numerous small ill-defined opacities in both lungs. The BUN was 35 mg% and was 270 mg% before his death two weeks after admission. At postmortem there was renal papillary necrosis and chronic pyelonephritis.

The specimen is a slice of lung sectioned to show moderately advanced focal centrilobular emphysema and anthracosis and in addition there are small focal areas of silicotic fibrosis.