Surgery for Pulmonary Cancer

A Declaration of Dividends.

¹ Thoracic Surgeon, New England Deaconess Hospital; Director, Overholt Thoracic Clinic, Boston.
² Fellow in Thoracic Surgery, Overholt Thoracic Clinic, Boston.

Forty-six patients who survived five or more years after resection for pulmonary carcinoma have been discussed. Factors which relate to curability from this and an over-all experience with the management of patients between 1932 and 1953 are given.

Epidermoid cancer treated prior to gross or microscopic evidence of extension beyond the lung gives the best prognosis. The higher grades of malignancy (Undifferentiated, oat-cell, etc.) are not always hopeless. In fact, seven of the 46 five-year survivals were treated for malignancies of this type. [SEE TABLE VIII] IS SOURCE PDF]

Palliative surgery may turn out to be curative. Over 10 per cent of those originally considered hopeless have been saved.

The extent of the resection must be based on the location and character of the lesion as well as upon the functional capacity of the contralateral lung. A limited resection has proved to be adequate and a preferable method of management for selected individuals

Higher cure rates can be predicted in the future as more explorations are done to determine the nature of lesions which produce silent abnormal densities in chest films.