Carcinoma of the Lung

Abstract

conclusions A man aged 53 had bilateral thromboses of the anterior cerebral arteries a few minutes after stimulation of a hypersensitive carotid sinus. While it is possible that the patient would sooner or later have had an ictus spontaneously, it is nevertheless felt that the slowing of the pulse and the fall in blood pressure produced by stimulation of the carotid sinus* was a contributory factor in prematurely precipitating the cerebral thrombosis.It is well known that the syndrome of the hypersensitive carotid sinus is most frequently observed in elderly persons with evidence of advanced arteriosclerosis, cerebral as well as myocardial. It may well be that carotid sinus stimulation is not entirely without danger in such persons. It would seem advisable that in all patients with evidences of advanced cerebral arteriosclerosis, stimulation of the carotid sinus should be performed cautiously and should be interrupted at the first A survey of the necropsy material of the Charity Hospital at New Orleans for the past decade reveals a relative and absolute increase of carcinoma of the lung. This is in accord with the reports of others.1 During the decade ending Dec. 31, 1940, a total of 12,972 necropsies were performed, 8,862 of which were on persons over 1 year old. Among the subjects there were 135 with carcinoma of the lung, 205 with carcinoma of the stomach and 66 each with carcinoma of the biliary system and of the pancreas. Carcinoma of the lung was therefore more than one half as frequent as carcinoma of the stomach and more frequent than carcinoma of the biliary system and carcinoma of the pancreas together. The year by year analysis shows that while in number of cases carcinoma of the stomach remained about the same, that of the lung increased gradually and during the past two years exceeded carcinoma of the stomach (table 1).Race, Sex and Age Incidence.\p=m-\Of the 8,862 necropsies 3,838 were performed on white and 5,024 on Negro subjects, a proportion of approximately 4:5 (table 2). Carcinoma of the lung, however, occurred 81 times among the white and 54 times among the Negro subjects, a proportion of 1.5 : 1.In the total necropsy material there were 5,635 males (2,610 white and 3,025 Negro) and 3,227 females (1,228 white and