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Background: Behçet’s disease (BD) is a multi systemic disease, not only confined to the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Asian countries as believed previously, but may also be found worldwide. Turkey is one of the countries where BD is common.
Setting: In this study, thoracic manifestations of BD were reviewed by collecting and reevaluating the case reports and case series reported by the Turkish authors. The parameters were selected as the age, gender, duration of the disease, pub monary and extrapulmonary symptoms/findings, laboratory findings, types of the pulmonary/vascular manifestations, radiological findings, treatments and outcomes.
Results: Between 1958 and 1998, 63 cases were reported. Additionally, there were well defined case series of pulmonary manifestations of BD consisting of a total of 156 cases. Male gender and young age were the dominant demographics (among the case reports, 94% was male and the mean age was 30 years). Hemoptysis was the most common symptom in BD with thoracic involvement (64%). 54% of vascular involvement was found as pulmonary artery aneurysm.
Conclusion: Only a well-informed physician can identify BD and features of thoracic involvement. Because of the poor prognosis, massive hemoptysis in a patient with characteristics of mucosal ulceration should alert the physician to consider the development of the pulmonary artery aneurysm.