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.