Treatment of peripheral vascular disorders.

Abstract

The use of this technique for diagnosing pneumocystis pneumonia does not seem to be widely known in Great Britain, and we were unaware of its use in such cases until it was brought to our attention by Dr C Danel from Paris. Its use was first described in 1974 by Drew et all using a catheter and later by Kelly et a12 and Even et al3 using a fibreoptic bronchoscope. The success rate seems to be almost 1000% with no false positives. The lavaged fluid is centrifuged, and the cells stained with methenamine silver stain, which shows the pneumocysts clearly. We have used the technique in one suspected case, and it was gratifying to be able to have a definite positive result within three hours of the bronchoscopy. Lung biopsy samples taken at the same time eventually were also positive, but in future we plan not to run the small, but appreciable, risk of transbronchial biopsy in such cases.