Biometric monitoring in silicosis to detect early disease and monitor lung injury: not quite there

Abstract

Any attempt to prevent the development of silicosis in exposed workers by identifying occult disease undetectable by conventional methodology, is a welcome and worthy cause. The recently published paper by Ophir et al. [1] addresses this issue by using biometric monitoring of functional (spirometry and diffusion capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide) and inflammatory parameters (percentage of neutrophils in a sample of induced sputum) in exposed workers. Using novel technology, they also quantitated the amount of silica in induced sputum in a cross-sectional study of 68 workers, 43 of whom already had silicosis, and compared their findings with those in 48 unexposed controls. These numbers are from the abstract of the paper; in the methods section in the body of the paper it is stated that 116 exposed individuals were screened, with no mention of the number of unexposed controls. 116 is the sum of 68 plus 48; subjects plus controls. We assume that this inaccuracy and the omission of the number of controls, are an oversight of the authors.