To explore the clinical characteristics of acute eosinophilic pneumonia (AEP).

To explore and summarize the characteristics of clinical diagnosis and treatment of 2 AEP patients diagnosed in Suqian Hospital of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital Group.Relative Literarures were reviewed in CNKI and PubMed from 2000 to 2021 by using the search terms of " acute eosinophilic pneumonia" and " AEP" , respectively.

In these 2 AEP patients, Case 1 was a severe patient caused by high fever, dry cough and asthma; and Case 2 was a mild patient caused by high fever and dry cough.Two cases were misdiagnosed as bacterial pneumonia.Bronchoalveolar lavage during fiberoptic bronchoscopy was performed in both.In alveolar lavage fluid, the proportion of eosinophils in Case 1 was 0.50 and 0.24 on days 7 and 19 respectively, and which in Case 2 was only 0.06 on day 14.Chest computed tomography (CT) showed that the thickening interlobular septum in double sides and the pleural effusion in unilateral or bilateral were detected.Both cases improved after glucocorticoid treatment and no recurence was found after several months of follow-up.Totally 24 Chinese literatures and 207 foreign literatures were collected in CNKI and the PubMed database, respectively, there are screened 12 literatures regarding etiology of Chinese population in Chinese and English, covering 12 AEP patients with 9 males and 3 females, and mean age of 34.3 years; the related causes of those patients were smoking (n=3), antibiotics (n=3), environmental factors (n=3), rash (n=2) and narcotic drugs (n=1).

As a rare disease, the cause of acute eosinophilic pneumonia may be associated with smoking, antigens, drugs etc.It is easy to be misdiagnozed as pneumonia, which is sensitive to hormone therapy and with generally good prognosis.

Pneumonia; Pulmonary eosinophilia; Signs and symptoms; Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid; Glucocorticoids