SANDESTIN, FLA. – Don’t be a slave to imaging when evaluating the patient with sarcoidosis.
“Sometimes, the worst-looking patients [on imaging] have the best prognosis,” Daniel Culver, DO, said at the annual Congress of Clinical Rheumatology. Patients with Löfgren’s syndrome are a very good example of this tenet, he said in an interview. Scans can look alarming, with multiple widespread granulomas. But Löfgren’s is generally a benign condition, despite its threatening mien.
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Instead of imaging, “Let two things drive your decision to treat: danger to an organ, and quality of life,” said Dr. Culver, a pulmonologist and director of the Sarcoidosis Center of Excellence at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio; he is also president of the World Association for Sarcoidosis.
He agrees with a decision schema published in 2015 (Clin Chest Med. 2015;36[4]:751-67).
Six factors weigh in favor of treatment:
- Symptomatic disease.
- Impaired organ function.
- Disease endangering an organ.
- Progressive disease.
- Clear-cut disease activity.
- Low likelihood of remission.
These must be balanced – with patient input as the fulcrum – against five factors that favor conservative management:
- Minimal symptoms.
- Good organ function.
- Low risk of danger to organs.
- Inactive disease.
- Higher likelihood of remission.
The decision to embark on a treatment program, usually starting with a steroid-based regimen, can’t be taken lightly, Dr. Culver said. A 2017 study showed that steroids pose a cumulative risk of toxicities for sarcoidosis patients (Respir Med. 2017 Nov;132:9-14). Patients who started steroids faced more than a doubling in the risk of a toxic side effect by 96 months when compared with those who didn’t. But even short-term steroid use increased the risk of a toxicity, Dr. Culver said. The study noted that problems can begin to occur in as little as 1 month, at a cumulative dose as low as 1 g.