Rheumatherapie und Lungentoxizität

Rheumatic diseases are treated with manifold different drugs that can potentially be pneumotoxic. Adverse effects of drug therapy may induce a wide variety of bronchopulmonary and pleural disorders, which can have a life-threatening course. These side effects rarely have pathognomonic features; therefore, drug-induced diseases are relevant differential diagnoses of pulmonary manifestations of rheumatic diseases, infections, and other independent genuine pulmonary diseases. Diagnosis is based mainly on verification of a compatible disease pattern and exclusion of differential diagnoses, as well as on assessment of the temporal relationship and the consequences of drug abstention.