Pulmonary cryptococcosis:a clinicopathological analysis of 17 cases

Purpose To study the clinicopathological features and differential diagnosis of pulmonary cryptococcosis(PC) to increase clinicians and pathologists awareness of it.Methods Seventeen cases of PC were reviewed and investigated by light and electron microscopy and histochemical staining.Results The patients consisted of 12 males and 5 females,with age of 5～67 years.The main symptoms were cough,plegm,fever,chestache and headache.Microscopically,the non-caseating granuloma formation was observed in these cases.Vascuolar cryptococcus spore could be seen in cytoplasma of multinuclear giant cell,macrophage and mesenchyma.It is red by stained with PAS.Electron microscopy revealed that most of cryptococcus neoformans(CN) had a simple structure with a few organelles.The capsule was seen in all organisms.Conclusions PC is an infrequent fungal disease in lung.The clinical manifestation and imaging of PC are nonspecific.It can be differentiated from other diseases based on histopathological features,histochemical staining and ultrastructural observation.