[An analysis of the causes of death in bronchial asthma patients (based on the data from a 13-year prospective...

The results of the catamnestic study of case reports and records of postmortem examination of 102 patients with bronchial asthma (BA) aged 47 to 88 years who died at a general hospital during 1976-1988 indicate that in the overwhelming majority of cases, there took place death "with asthma" rather than death "from asthma". At the same time the dominant pathology was coronary heart disease (acute coronary failure, myocardial infarction, progressive heart failure associated with atherosclerotic and postinfarction cardiosclerosis). Emphasis is laid on the fact that according to the autopsy data, the rate of the recognized stenosing atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries considerably exceeded the number of cases of coronary heart disease documented clinically (typical angina pectoris of effort, significant macrofocal myocardial infarction). The characteristic features of the group under observation included an unexpectedly frequent combination of BA and malignant neoplasms (24 cases), including lung cancer in 13 of these cases.