[Changes in the pleura and review of idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis Ceelen-Gellerstedt disease].

Ceelen's disease has been considered after the first description as a rather well defined nosological entity with severe pathological findings in the kind of a "brownish induration of the lung without a detectable extrapulmonary circulation". Nowadays this disease enter into the general discussion of uncertain pulmonary bleeding mechanism. So far not further characterized structural changes in the pleura in an open lung biopsy of a 28-year-old woman with Ceelen's disease are reported. Basically the alterations consists of disruption of the elastic laminae associated with a giant cell reaction with incorporation of elastica fragments. In a survey of mainly pathological anatomical reports on Ceelen's disease the hypothesis of a primary alteration of the elastic tissue is confronted with the hypothesis of a primary not yet in detail characterised defect of the alveolar-capillary entity and brought in relation to the particular findings in the pleura.