In a prospective study of 183 patients undergoing lateral thoracotomy the 125 I fibrinogen uptake test and perioperative heparin prophylaxis for deep-vein thrombosis were investigated. There was an incidence of deep vein thrombosis in 51% in untreated control patients. The heparin prophylaxis effectively reduced the incidence of deep venous thrombosis to 28% (P less than 0.005) without increasi...

A 28-year-old housewife was admitted to hospital in congestive cardiac failure but treatment with digitalis resulted in rapid improvement. She had a past history of attacks of winter bronchitis and rheumatic fever at 12 years of age. Clinical examination suggested that the underlying lesion was stenosis of the mitral valve, and one month later the patient was referred to a thoracic surgeon for ...

Background: Post–thoracotomy pain can result not only in discomfort to the patient but also pulmonary complications, due ineffective coughing, which leads retention of secretions. It into chronic post–thoracotomy long term. Many analgesic techniques are use control it, including continuous serratus anterior plane block (SAPB) and thoracic epidural analgesia (TEA). We compared efficacy safety SA...

OBJECTIVE Paravertebral block (PVB) is an effective alternative to epidural analgesia in the management of post-thoracotomy pain. Rib spreading (RS) is an important noxious stimulus considered a major cause of post-thoracotomy pain. Our hypothesis was that a bolus of ropivacaine 0.2% through a paravertebral catheter (PVC) inserted before RS could decrease pain during the first 72 postoperative ...

BACKGROUND The optimal approach to the investigation of possible distant metastases in patients with apparently operable non-small cell lung cancer who do not have symptoms suggesting metastatic disease is controversial. METHODS We conducted a randomized, controlled trial in thoracic surgery services at mainly academic tertiary- and secondary-care general hospitals. We recruited 634 patients ...

Successful thoracotomy in the prehospital environment is becoming more widely accepted. 2 Here we present the case of cardiac arrest secondary to penetrating chest injury and the successful prehospital thoracotomy that followed. The resuscitation was associated with the spontaneous return of motor activity and later, hospital discharge. The implication for the immediate need for anaesthesia and...

Chronic chest pain is a common complication following thoracotomy, which is generally attributed to intercostal neuritis or neuralgia. Response to medical treatment is poor. We report a case of persistent chest pain following open lung biopsy, which was found to result from lung herniation, a rare, but surgically correctable complication of thoracotomy. Since lung herniation may be easily overl...

A series of 15 patients with life threatening, massive hemoptysis is reported. Thirteen of these patients underwent immediate operative treatment with only three deaths. One died after bronchoscopic identification of the bleeding site while awaiting elective thoracotomy. The other patient left the hospital against medical advice. Immediate identification of the site of bleeding by bronchoscopy ...

Objective: Colon/rectum cancer often presents with intrapulmonary metastases. Surgical resection can be performed in a selected group of patients. In this study, the search for possible prognostic factors of patients with primary colon/rectum cancer and lung metastases was performed. Methods: Medical records of 110 patients operated on pulmonary metastases of primary colon/rectum cancer were re...