Tracheobronchial amyloidosis and confocal endomicroscopy

Tracheobronchial amyloidosis is one of many causes of endobronchial stenosis and nodularity, the concrete diagnosis of which currently requires the finding of apple-green birefringence from endobronchial biopsies. Bronchoscopic probe-based confocal endomicroscopy (pCLE) is a novel optical biopsy technique which provides real-time images of the lattice structure of the bronchial basement membrane - a finding lost in malignancy. This case study outlines the imperfect, essentially palliative management of this rare disease, and shows for the first time the unusual dappled in vivo pCLE images of amyloid-affected endobronchium.