Chest Imaging

Bronchiolitis obliterans

term describing bronchiolar pathology. The term has caused confusion. Clinically speaking, bronchiolitis obliterans refers to a syndrome of chronic airflow obstruction with radiographic overinflation caused by pathological changes in the small airways. Pathologically, bronchiolitis obliterans has been used to refer to two groups of lesions, bronchiolitis obliterans with intraluminal polyps and constrictive bronchiolitis. These two groups show little clinical overlap, and rarely are temporally related histologically; rather, they represent two clinicopathological groups.

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