ABSTRACT
There is no specific level of pathologic change that defines a minimal injury. It is safe to state that a minimal injury is one in which the lesion is hard to detect with standard methods. Specific cell characteristics can be derived to assess the response of individual cell types to minimal injuries. While changes in tissue volumes and thicknesses may indicate the extent of an injury, they reveal little about the mechanism of injury. Changes in cell characteristics such as cell number, cell size, and cell shape can reveal individual cell susceptibility, cell ability to differentiate or regenerate, and relationships between cell populations as well as between cells and matrix components. Brody and co-workers have established that inhaled chrysotile asbestos fibers accumulate preferentially on the more proximal alveolar duct junctions. This coincides with earlier findings showing that the fibrotic changes of asbestosis occur predominantly around the bronchiolar-alveolar duct junctions.
