Pulmonary disease in patients with hematologic malignancies.

Patients with hematologic neoplasms frequently experience pulmonary disease. The possibility of a malignant involvement of the lung parenchyma is a well recognized and not unusual event, secondary spread due to lymphoproliferative disorders being the most common situation. Furthermore, the development and the advances in treatment options such as hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, radiation therapy and/or combined drug regimen use have significantly widened the spectrum of non-neoplastic pulmonary complications that can crop up in these patients. Infections, drug/radiation-induced toxicity, and graft-versus-host disease (GVHD)-related complications account by now for most pulmonary problems in hematologic patients and represent a difficult challenge both in diagnostic and in therapeutic terms for the clinician. The aim of this review is to highlight the clinicopathologic spectrum of lung diseases which can occur in the setting of hematologic malignancies. A particular emphasis is devoted to the diagnostic approach, high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) assuming a key role since different patterns of CT abnormalities are associated with a different yield of the available diagnostic tools and may help in narrowing the differential diagnosis.