Studies on the surgery of bronchiectasis. II. Histologic study of changes in the mucous membrane of bronchus.

The literature on histologic study of bronchiectasis is abundant , and especially as to chronic inflammation of bronchi, full information is available. In the course of histopathologic studies on this disease , ex amining serial sections prepared from resected specimens , we found changes indicative of precancerous degeneration in 4 of the 10 cases examined and could obtain several pictures showing varying extents of malignancy , as will be reported in the following. The age and lesions of patients from whom serial sections were pre pared are shown in Table I. The following findings were common to all of the 10 cases studied ; 1) an uniform chronic inflammation of bron chial mucosa from bronchi to alveoli ; 2) some extent of epithelial hyper trophy and hyperplasia. Most of the pictures of the hypertrophy and hyperplasia seen in the present study represented papillary proliferation toward the bronchial lumen or dendritic invasion into the submucous tissue. Fig. 1 shows papillary proliferation of several layers of tall cylindrical cells in more proximal parts of respiratory bronchioles ; Fig. 2 represents