Expert: Stacey Lloyd - 8/16/2006

Question
hi.  i have been an asthmatic since i was three years old .  i am now 45 years old.  i have been taking all sorts of medications since then.  i have also been on and off massive dosage of  steroids particularly prednisone.  

sometime in april, i was brought to the emergency room because of severe asthma attack.  they took a chest xray and said it was normal.

just very recently, my blood pressure shot up to 186/124.  my regular blood pressure is between 120/80 to 130/90.

i went to an internist who recommended some tests to be done for him to be able to determine more or less what was causing my blood pressure to shoot up and be very unstable.  

the test came out normal but my chest xray showed that i had a 1 cm nodule in my left lower lobe.  he said he thinks its a scar.  i am not a smoker, by the way.

he said that we may either take chest xrays for the next 6 months to determine if the nodule is growing or just take a ct scan to find out right away.  

i told him about the chest xray i had in april which the doctor in the emergency room said was normal.  he told me to get the result so he can compare both xray results.

i got the xray result and saw the reading and the xray plate.  there is indeed a nodule in the left lower lobe.  and the finding was a pulmonary granuloma.

what is a pulmonary granuloma?  is it something serious?  how did i get this?  did my medicines have anything to do with this?  what are the treatments for this?  please help me understand what this is.

thank you.  

Answer
A pulmonary granuloma, as defined by wrongdiagnosis.com, is "a chronic inflammation and progressive fibrosis of the pulmonary alveolar walls, with steadily progressive dyspnea."

They are minute, granular, inflammatory lesions caused by  granulomatous diseases (e.g. tuberculosis). These lesions will progressively cause shortness of breath.

There is not a lot of information available on pulmonary granulomas, therefore I recommend that you talk to your doctor.

I wish I could help you further, but there just isn't much information on this condition.

Take care,

Stacey Lloyd
Lung Diseases Guide
About.com
http://lungdiseases.about.com