Irradiation damage to the lung

While some degree of injury to normal, non-tumor-bearing, intrathoracic structures always occurs following irradiation for cure or palliation of neoplastic disease, clinical expression of this injury is uncommon. However, under certain circumstances, clinical manifestations may be severe and life threatening. Acute radiographic manifestations of pulmonary injury usually appear either synchronous with or, more typically, seven to ten days after the onset of the clinical syndrome. The acute signs of edema and slight volume loss within the irradiated zone are nonspecific except for their temporal and spatial relationship to the irradiation of the patient. Resolution of the acute changes is followed by pulmonary cicatrization, which is almost always stable within one year after completion of therapy. Change in postirradiation scarring following stabilization of the reaction must always be assumed to be due to some other process. While the radiograph primarily reveals pulmonary injury, all tissues, including the heart and major vessels, are susceptible, and the radiologist must recognize that any change within the thorax of a patient who has undergone thoracic irradiation may be a complication of that treatment. Differentiation of irradiation injury from residual or recurrent tumor, drug reaction, or opportunistic infection may be difficult and at times impossible.