[Extrapulmonary lesions of sarcoidosis].

Varieties of extrapulmonary sarcoidosis lesions have been detected in Japan, mostly in the past ten years, including heart, CNS, liver, spleen, bone marrow stomach, colon, esophagus, pancreas, gall bladder, abdominal lymph node, kidney, muscle, bone, joint and others. Most of these were detected mainly at onset with sarcoid changes on chest film. Hepatic lesions have frequently been found by peritoneoscopy and liver biopsy, irrespective of the age of patients or stage of sarcoid change on chest film. Therefore hepatic lesions are very important in the diagnosis and following the clinical course of sarcoidosis. Recent diagnostic procedures of extrapulmonary lesion include abdominal, cardiac and muscle echography; brain, chest, abdominal and muscle CT; cardiac and muscle MRI; gallium scan; thallium myocardial scan, cardiac pool scan and Holter ECG. Extrapulmonary sarcoidosis lesions causing disability were located in the heart, CNS, eye, liver, kidney, muscle and bone. These disabilities were found predominantly in cases older than 40 years old, and were mainly detected at onset in the past 10 years. The duration of some of these disabilities was more than 10 years.