Five hundred and eleven patients with penetrating or perforating chest injuries were admitted to the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University Central Hospital, Helsinki, during the 25-year-period 1952-77. There were 433 stab wounds, 59 gunshot wounds and 19 other penetrating injuries. The organs most often involved were lungs (major haemo- or pneumothorax in 385 patients), heart (63 patients) and liver (61 patients). About one third of the patients were in profound shock on admission. The treatment was immediate thoracotomy in 176 (35%) and laparotomy in 123 cases (24%). Tube thoracostomy was applied in 117 patients and needle aspiration performed in 88 patients. Nine patients died (mortality of 1.8%). Two patients required later open-heart procedure. One of them had an aortopulmonary fistula and the other a traumatic VSD combined with aortic valve lesion. One of the traumatic VSDs closed spontaneously during the follow-up time. An active operative approach in the early phase seems to guarantee the best final results, especially in the most critically ill patients.

Ahs/rcict. Furiher to previous reports in the literature on 30 cases of thymolipoma, one further such case is clinically and histopathologically described. A tumour weighing llOOg was was incidentally discovered in an otherwise healthy man, 20 years old, whose X-ray examination suggested an enlarged heart. This benign, rare mediastinal tumour is usually asymptomatic or causes mechanical compression of mediastinal organs. Histologically, there are islets and strands of thymic tissue intermingled with mature fat cells.Scand Cardiovasc J Downloaded from informahealthcare.com by University of Otago on 12/27/14For personal use only.

No abstract

The feasibility and reliability of peroperative fine needle aspiration biopsy of lung tumors were studied in a series of 54 patients. The postoperative histologic examination confirmed that 47 of the lesions were malignant. The cytologic examination also showed malignancy in 45 of these cases. The accuracy of fine needle cytology thus was 96%. In the two false negative reports the classification was Papanicolaou grades II and III. The cytologic classification of the histologically benign lesions was only grades I or II. Thus there were no false positive cytologic results. No complications arose from the needle biopsies. Peroperative fine needle aspiration biopsy at thoracotomy is rapid, simple and safe, and has a high degree of accuracy. It is diagnostically useful in cases without preoperative confirmation of suspected lung tumor if excisional biopsy is judged to be hazardous or unlikely to yield a definite diagnosis. The method permits the surgeon to assess the extent of a malignancy and can specify the cell type of the tumor.