Lentil Aspiration Pneumonia

To the Editor.—Report of a Case.— A 14-year-old boy housed at a special educational school had had cerebral palsy since birth and psychosis that deepened with adolescence. This patient was admitted with respiratory distress, fever, and cough, as well as anemia. On admission, a chest roentgenogram (Fig 1) was taken. After aggressive antibiotic therapy, the radiographic abnormalities were still present. To establish a definitive diagnosis, the patient underwent open-lung biopsy. Postsurgically, he suffered an acute bout of respiratory distress with cardiac arrest and died four weeks after admission. On the admission chest roentgenogram there was a bright, fine interstitial nodular pattern, diffusely distributed over the pulmonary parenchyma with miliary characteristics (Fig 1). The open-lung biopsy disclosed a chronic granulomatous pneumonia secondary to aspiration of food, primarylegumen pulse. A postmortem examination revealed a confluent nodular pneumonia in both lungs, pathologically characteristic of lentil aspiration pneumonia. Comment.— Lentil pneumonia is a