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Cigarette smoking is claiming an increasing health toll among women, with rising morbidity and mortality related to lung cancer and COPD. Whether women are more susceptible to the effects of cigarettes with regard to carcinogenesis and development of COPD remains controversial. Gender differences clearly exist in certain aspects of cigarette-related disease, including histologic distribution of lung cancer and the ability of smokers to quit. It is likely that gender differences also exist in the reasons that individuals choose to smoke. Understanding those reasons will be important in developing targeted programs for smoking cessation and in addressing the challenge of the prevention of smoking initiation in women.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the most common of the classic connective tissue diseases. Its manifestations in the chest are varied as the pleura, lung parenchyma, airways, and pulmonary vasculature can all be involved. The approach to a patient with RA and respiratory complaints, radiographic findings, or physiologic abnormalities requires a broad understanding of these manifestations. Moreover, the potential for therapy-related toxicity adds further complexity to the pulmonary evaluation of these patients.

The pulmonary manifestations of collagen vascular diseases span an enormous range of clinical and radiographic findings. The breadth of these abnormalities is as diverse as the underlying diseases themselves. A comprehensive discussion of pulmonary involvement in four of these diseases, the Marfan syndrome, ankylosing spondylitis, Sjögren's syndrome, and relapsing polychondritis, is presented.