LIPOID PNEUMONIA IN ADULTS*

THAT the problem of lipoid pneumonia is not one primarily of infants and children is indicated by the marked increase in the number of cases reported in adults in the past five years,1 which now equal in number those observed in infants.2'8 In 264 cases compiled from 1927 through 1942, Sweeney8 found 133 in infants and children and 131 in adults. Hence, the condition is not as uncommon in adults as previously thought. Of these, only 44 could be definitely ascribed to the use of intranasal mineral oil. The use of mineral oil as a laxative accounted for nearly half of the adult cases, whereas vitamin oils were the outstanding causes in children and infants, ac-counting for over one-third of the cases. As Ikeda4 has pointed out, the term lipoid pneumonia should be strictly confined to a productive inflammation of the lung in which the fundamental histologic alterations are directly attributable to the presence of foreign oil or fat. A few oil-laden macrophages and oil globules due to agonal or terminal aspiration in acute exudative or septic pneumonia, he pointed out