Figure 1.

A case of chronic micro-aspiration pneumonia. (A) Chest (upper panel) and abdominal (lower panel) X-rays of a typical case of chronic aspiration pneumonia due to repeated small amounts of aspiration. The patient was a 78-year-old male nursing home resident. He underwent percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) one year earlier and had sporadic fever one day per week for several months. At the time of admission to our geriatric unit, he had continuous low-grade fever for 5 days with coarse crackles; (B) chest CT of the same patient as in A, showing very solid consolidation in bilateral back areas; (C) chronic inflammation and exaggerated lymphangiogenesis in the lung of aspiration pneumonia patients. H&E staining of the lung from controls (a) and patients (b). Staining for lymphatics (podoplanin, brown) in controls (c) and patients (d). Control lungs have podoplanin-immunoreactive tube-like structures at low density, whereas patients’ lungs have no greater density. Scale bar: 400 µm in (a) and (b); 100 µm in (c) and (d). The data are from the same experiment as (20) but are not shown in (20).