[Concomitant pulmonary tuberculosis and bronchogenic carcinoma: a difficult diagnosis. Report of eighteen cases...

The diagnosis in the same patient of the two diseases is very often delayed. Generally, tuberculosis is diagnosed first, and then cancer when the radiologic lesions extend despite of antituberculous treatment. In half of our cases, tuberculous lesions could not be individualized from cancer on the chest X-ray films. Antineoplastic chemotherapies may favour the development of tuberculosis, or atypical mycobacteriosis, in cancer patients, and it must be considered as an opportunistic infection in such patients. Clinicians should be aware of the possible coexistence of the two diseases and, in practice, ask for fiberoptic bronchoscopy and sputum cytology in tuberculous patients presenting atypical features, and for sputum examination in cancer patients.