Central Airway Obstruction due to Hematologic Malignancies, Diagnosis and Local Treatment - A Narrative Review

Abstract

Background: Malignant hematologic diseases may present with rare features. One of these is the first manifestation as a central airway lesion whose symptoms could be mistaken for asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, non-resolving or recurrent pneumonia, foreign body inhalation or both acute and chronic heart failure. The age of onset of the symptoms does not help in the differential diagnosis, leaving the clinician with a diagnostic dilemma, frequently clarified by invasive sampling. Current evidence of this group of entities is based predominantly on case reports. The aim of this work is to report a non-systematic review of haematological pathologies that can present themselves as an obstruction of the central airways, the possible ways in which it is possible to diagnose and treat them locally. Methodology: This revision work is the result of a critical analysis of the existing literature, carried out by collecting the main bibliographic entries in different languages present in international scientific databases relative to the topic of interest. All the arguments have been elaborated by the authors and critically re-proposed, in a non-systematic way (narrative revision).