Sarcoidosis in aircrew

Pulmonary lesions resembling sarcoid granulomata histologically appeared as chance findings on routine histology of UK aircraft accident fatalities more often than was expected from the recognised clinical incidence of sarcoidosis in UK. It was not possible to prove that these lesions in postmortem tissue were sarcoidosis, but all attempts to demonstrate any other aetiology failed. This raised the question as to whether there might be an association between these lesions and aircraft accidents, or whether some factor led to their occurrence in aircrew more frequently than in passengers. However, the clinical incidence and the postmortem occurrence are not strictly comparable, and the numbers involved are small and so the findings may be due to chance.