Sarcoidosis in India

Sarcoidosis in India frequently presents in elderly males with a dissociation between extensive radiological changes and scanty clinical signs in the chest. Clubbing is not infrequent. Erythema nodosum, generalized lymphadenopathy, eye changes, and bone cysts are uncommon. Spontaneous resolution or asymptomatic course is very rare. Follow-up reports, whenever available, show that patients have frequent relapses which respond well to short courses of steroids. This comparative study shows a few differences between this series (of 90 cases diagnosed from 1957 to 1982), two different Western series and the World series. Detection and documentation of cases of sarcoidosis in India have been on the increase during the last few decades. Whether that is due to increase in incidence or awareness is difficult to say. In two special centres in India, the frequency of detection of the disorder varied between 61.2 (in a chest hospital in Delhi during 1957-74) to over 150 per 100 000 patients (Calcutta) attending a general hospital with a sarcoidosis clinic (1980-82).