rue fashion victims: Median survival of six years for patients with silicosis due to jeans sandblasting. Young men diagnosed with silicosis from sandblasting jeans face a bleak prognosis. This occupational hazard is mortal and needs to be prevented. This is the message Turkish doctors conveyed at the 20th Annual Congress of the European Respiratory Society. Over the last decade, silica sand has been widely used in sandblasting of jeans in Turkey resulting in an epidemic of silicosis. The first case of sandblasting silicosis was described 8 years ago, defined as silicosis caused by jeans sandblasting. A new study examines clinical outcomes of young men who suffered disability or death from working in the textile industry. Dr Nur Dilek Bakan and colleagues of the Department of Chest Diseases, Yedikule Teaching Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey studied medical records of cases with silicosis due to jeans sandblasting seen at their institution between 2001 and 2009. They included 32 male patients diagnosed with silicosis due to jeans sandblasting over an 8-year period. Mean age was 31.5 years.
They had worked in average 66.4 hours/week for median 28.5 months as jeans sandblasters. Their mean cumulative exposure time to silica sand was 12 957 hours. The median follow-up period was 29 months. The median latency period (time elapsed since initial exposure until the diagnosis) was 5.5 years (range 2-14). Thirty-one (96.7%) of 32 patients were followed-up. The median follow-up period after the diagnosis of silicosis was 29 months. Sixteen (64%) of the surviving patients developed progressive massive fibrosis with marked functional impairment.
Pulmonary function of ten (40%) patients were <40 % (predicted) at the end of the follow-up period. Six of them were hospitalised within last 6 months of follow-up with respiratory failure. One patient is currently on the waiting list for lung transplantation. Six (19%) patients died from progressive massive fibrosis. Nine (28.1%) of the patients were compensated due to silicosis. Only 2 patients received compensation before they died. Mean survival was only 78 months. The estimated 5-year survival for jeans sandblasters’ silicosis is 69%.
“Deaths in young adults with silicosis reflects relatively recent overexposures in jeans sandblasting, some of sufficient magnitude to cause severe disease and death after relatively short periods of exposure. It is important to draw worldwide attention to this occupational hazard in order to prevent new silicosis cases in other countries. Sustained effort must be made to increase awareness of jeans sandblasters’ silicosis. There is no other solution to stopping the mortal procedure “jeans sandblasting”, concludes Dr Bakan.
