[The prognosis of intrathoracic sarcoidosis on the basis of the clinical picture and the histological feature in the mediastinal lymph nodes (author's transl)].

The clinical course of (pulmonary) sarcoidosis is difficultly foreseeable with regard to the fate of a given patient. There are some clinical features to get a probably good or probably poor prognosis, but there are only a few presumptions about the correlation between the histologic patterns with the clinical course. Lymph nodes were removed by mediastinoscopy. The authors have the intention with the aid of the histologic picture in these lymph nodes to examine, if 1. micro-cellular reactions and pure epithelioid-cell granulomas may have a better prognosis than 2. central necrosis, hyalinization, and fibrosis, whereas 3. the number of giant cells seems to be without prognostic significance.