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Congenital pulmonary lymphangiectasia

  • Shi-Min Yuan EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: March 4, 2017

Abstract

Congenital pulmonary lymphangiectasia (CPL) is a rare but fatal disease, usually having an onset from the first few hours to days after birth. Inconsistent nomenclatures were used for CPL in the past decades. Patients often present with intractable respiratory failure, hydrops fetalis and even sudden death. The etiologies of CPL remain unclear. Previous hypotheses suggested that CPL might be caused by conditions preventing normal regression of the lymphatics after the 18th–20th week of gestation. Up-to-date biological studies on lymphatic development, lymphatic valve formation and occurrence of hydrops fetalis revealed possible causative relations with mutations of genes of the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR), RAS/MAPK, PI3K/AKT and NF-κB signaling pathways. Lung biopsy with subsequent histological and immunohistochemical studies is a gold standard of CPL diagnosis. Apart from symptomatic and supportive treatments, novel regimens including sirolimus, a mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor, one of the inhibitors of the pertinent signaling pathways and ethiodized oil lymphatic embolization under ultrasound-guided intranodal lymphangiography have shown encouraging short-term therapeutic effects for lymphatic anomalies. Surgical operations (lobectomy or pneumonectomy) can be the treatment of choice for patients with CPL confined to one lobe or one lung. Patients with CPL usually have a poor prognosis and often die during the neonatal period. Their prognoses are expected to improve with the development of modern therapeutic agents.


Corresponding author: Professor Shi-Min Yuan, MD, PhD, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The First Hospital of Putian, Teaching Hospital, Fujian Medical University, 389 Longdejing Street, Chengxiang District, Putian 351100, Fujian Province, People’s Republic of China, Tel.: +86-594-6923117

Author’s statement

  1. Conflict of interest: Authors state no conflict of interest.

  2. Material and methods: Informed consent: Informed consent has been obtained from all individuals included in this study.

  3. Ethical approval: The research related to human subject use has complied with all the relevant national regulations, and institutional policies, and is in accordance with the tenets of the Helsinki Declaration, and has been approved by the authors’ institutional review board or equivalent committee.

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Received: 2016-9-11
Accepted: 2017-2-1
Published Online: 2017-3-4
Published in Print: 2017-12-20

©2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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