[Clinical and autopsy studies on prognosis of sarcoidosis]

Prognosis of 435 sarcoidosis patients and epidemiologic features were studied in 320 autopsy cases. About 80-90% of Stage I or II patients showed spontaneous remission. The prognosis of Stage III patient was poor and corticosteroid therapy seemed to be rather ineffective. The proportion of sarcoidosis autopsy, relative to total autopsy cases, appears to be increasing. The number of female cases was about 2 times larger than that of males. Only 43.4% of the total autopsy cases had been diagnosed clinical sarcoidosis. Over 5 times more sarcoidosis patients than clinically diagnosed were estimated to exist. Approximately one half of the sarcoidosis autopsy cases were related to cardiac sarcoidosis.