What is Sarcoidosis?

Sarcoidosis is a medical mystery. For the physician who is working on the scientific frontier, the disease can be a fascinating challenge. For the patient it can be a very seroius illness, rarely fatal, sometimes of little consequence.

Most sarcoidosis patients do not even have any symptoms and probably never know they have the disease. It is not a contagious disease.

Sarcoidosis: What Symptoms Could I Have?

Most patients have no symptoms at all. In pulmonary sarcoidosis, patients may have a dry cough, shortness of breath or mild chest pain. There can also be fatigue, weakness or weight loss. These symptoms are common in many other lung diseases so diagnosis may be difficult.

In those cases where symptoms appear outside the lungs, one may get a scaly rash, red bumps on the legs, fever, soreness of the eyes and pain and swelling of the ankles.

How is Sarcoidosis Diagnosed?

Any of the symptoms listed in the previous section may lead a physician to consider sarcoidosis. Sarcoidosis is initially diagnosed based on a physical examination, lab tests, pulmonary function studies and a chest x-ray. When enlargement of lymph glands in the center of the lungs is seen on x-ray, sarcoidosis may be suspected.To confirm the diagnosis, a biopsy is usually performed on any of the affected organs or from material in a granuloma on the skin.

How Serious is Sarcoidosis?

About 50% of sarcoidosis patients improve spontaneously. The disease is fatal in less than 5% of patients.

In between the two extremes, patients have mild to severe sarcoidosis-with various degrees of impairment, or none at all.