Pulmonary calcifications exhibit diverse morphologies and clinical significance. They can serve as markers of chronicity and severity, ranging from scattered, post-infectious changes found incidentally to chronic, rare diseases characterized by diffuse calcifying changes and poor prognosis.

To better understand the prognosis, it is important to recognize the two most common mechanisms of pulmonary calcifications: metastatic calcifications, which involve the deposition of calcium salts in healthy lung tissue and are associated with systemic disturbances in calcium and phosphorus metabolism, and dystrophic calcifications, which occur in damaged or necrotic lung tissue and form calcium deposits despite normal serum calcium levels. This process is often seen in chronic inflammatory conditions, infections, or malignancies that lead to tissue injury.

Finally, there is pulmonary ossification, which is the formation of mature bone in lung tissue rather than the deposition of calcium salts.