site logo

Treatment

Categories: MALIGNANT DISEASE OF THE ESOPHAGUS
Sources: A Manual Of Peroral Endoscopy And Laryngeal Surgery

Pedunculated malignant growths are readily removed with

snare or punch forceps. Cure has resulted in one case of the author

following bronchoscopic removal of an endothelioma from the bronchus;

and a limited carcinoma of the bronchus has been reported cured by

bronchoscopic removal, with cauterization of the base. Most of the

cases, however, will be subjects for palliative tracheotomy and radium

therapy. It will be fou
d necessary in many of the cases to employ the

author's long, cane-shaped tracheal cannula (Fig. 104, A), in order to

pipe the air down to one or both bronchi past the projecting neoplasm.



It has recently been demonstrated that following the intravenous

injection of a suspension of the insoluble salt, radium sulphate, that

the suspended particles are held in the capillaries of the lung for a

period of one year. Intravenous injections of a watery suspension, and

endobronchial injections of a suspension of radium sulphate in oil,

have had definite beneficial action. While as yet, no relatively

permanent cures of pulmonary malignancy have been obtained, the

amelioration and steady improvement noted in the technic of radium

therapy are so encouraging that every inoperable case should be thus

treated, if the disease is not in a hopelessly advanced stage.



In a case under the care of Dr. Robert M. Lukens at the Bronchoscopic

Clinic, a primary epithelioma of the trachea was retarded for 2 years

by the use of radium applied by Dr. William S. Newcomet,

radium-therapist, and Miss Katherine E. Schaeffer, technician.



More

;