CT-pathology correlation of amiodarone lung

Eleven isolated lungs from patients who had received amiodarone therapy and 22 other lungs from age-race-sex-matched controls autopsied at The Johns Hopkins Hospital were inflation fixed, air dried, and examined by high resolution CT (HRCT). The HRCT findings were directly correlated with gross and histologic changes in these lungs. Intralobular septal thickening and visceral pleural thickening on postmortem HRCT were significantly more severe in the lungs from patients who had received amiodarone than in the controls (p less than 0.05). These HRCT findings were directly associated with the presence of mural foam cells and intraalveolar foam cells. These results suggest that amiodarone therapy may lead to the accumulation of mural and intraalveolar foam cells, and the accumulation of these foam cells may account for the changes seen on HRCT.