Homogeneity does not describe the surgical community. This can confuse someone looking for the right lung cancer surgeon. There are general surgeons and thoracic surgeons (who have confusingly self-divided themselves into cardiac, cardiothoracic and general thoracic subspecialties). Within all these surgical groups can be found surgeons who operate for lung Read More
Category: Lung Cancer
Goldilocks…the principle, not the character. The thoracic surgeon must get the operation “just right.” Take out too much lung and the patient is forever short of breath; not enough and the cancer is not cured. As I discussed in a previous blog, Evarts Graham, a surgeon in St. Louis, performed Read More
Staging cancer…it has nothing to do with the theater. In short, staging is determining the extent of the lung cancer. Is the tumor invading into structures outside the lung such as the rib cage or the heart? Has the cancer spread through the lymphatic system to lymph nodes near but Read More
Lung operations in humans arrive. In 1931, Rudolf Nissen reported the first successful pneumonectomy (removal of an entire lung in surgeonese). His patient was a 12-year-old girl with chronic infection. She suffered a cardiac arrest during an initial attempt, was resuscitated and underwent the successful operation two weeks later. Nissen Read More
Animals and Humans A few years after Péan’s operation Block, a Polish surgeon, advanced the possibility of operating on the lung when he reported the successful performance of pneumonectomy (removing the entire lung) in rabbits. His reports and demonstrations of his technique to curious surgeons created a modest stir in Read More
