A 21-year-old patient, after radiation therapy to the mediastinum for Hodgkin's disease, died six years later of a spinal cord glioma, believed to be caused by irradiation therapy. That the x-ray therapy provoked neoplastic changes seems likely, although it could be coincidental.
A 74-year-old woman presented with skin squamous cell carcinomas on both palms, ankles and soles. The patient also had biopsy-proven porokeratosis. There was hyperkeratosis of the palms and soles. The left palm cancer was excised and skin grafted, but recurred. A nodule in the scar of the donor site of the skin graft in the left upper arm was biopsy-proven squamous cell carcinoma. A metastatic left axillary lymph node was excised. There were no palpable metastatic lymph nodes in either the groin or right axilla. All cancers were irradiated and disappeared, as did the incidentally irradiated hyperkeratosis. Porokeratosis may be associated with skin squamous cell carcinoma, yet in this case porokeratosis could not be identified in the heavily hyperkeratotic palms and soles. Despite poor prognostic signs, i.e. the location in the palm, and metastasis, the patient has done well so far.
Nineteen patients with carcinoma of the maxillary antrum were treated sequentially with pre‐operative irradiation and radical surgery.
Seven of 19 patients (37 percent) were free of disease for longer than three and one half years (one patient for two years).
Infrastructure tumors were more favorable than those involving the entire antrum. The control rate for infrastructure tumors was five of 11 patients (45 percent).
The most important cause of failure is the inability to destroy the tumor locally or early local recurrence.
Pre‐operative irradiation at a dose level of 6,000 rads in five weeks or its equivalent is an important addition to the treatment of advanced antral cancer.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.