RADIUM CURES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3850, 27 September 1928, Page 1

RADIUM CURES.

CANCER OP THE BREAST. RADIOLOGY ALLIED TO SURGERY. London, July 27. A discussion on the relative values of surgery and radiation for the treatment of cancer of the breast was opened by Professor Burton Lee, of Cornell University, at the Cancer Conference. ’ Mr. W. Sampson Handley, of Middlesex Hospital, said he had been able to. show by clinical experiment that surface radiation could destroy, or at least arrest, the advance of a microscopic growing edge of permeated lymphatics. He questioned very much, however, whether surface methods could overcome the difficulties presented by the large size of the area to be treated and the depth beneath the surface to which the lethal dose of radium must be transmitted.

Eight years ago, accepting the necessity of pursuing breast cancer into the thorax, he began as a routine practice to bury radium tubes along the line of the internal mammary glands at the time of the operation. “Fifty-eight per cent, of my patients treated in this way-re-main free from recurrence at the end of three years, an improvement of 10 per cent, upon my previous results. I assert, therefore, that no operation upon breast cancer is complete unless at the same time a systematic attempt "is- made by buried radium tubes to deal with the intra-thoracic extension of the disease. “My conclusion,” added Mr. Handley, “is that operation in breast cancer still remains a necessity to remove the bulk of the disease and to reduce the problem of the radiologist to manageable proportions. For the present, at any rate, surgery and., radiology must be colleagues, not competitors. To use either means alone is to light a dangerous antagonist with only one hand.” DETAILS OF FORTY-TWO CASES. Mr. Geoffrey Keynes, of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, gave details of 42 cases of cancer of the breast in which during the past four years the treatment had been to apply radium needles. Eliminating the more recent cases, 24 patients were left in whom something approaching a result could be claimed of not less than eight months’ duration. The results were: Apparently cured, 13; diet of metastases, six; alive with reelurrences, twp; alive with metastases, two; died following recurrences, one.

Of these 24 patients, only seven could be regarded as operable. Among the other 17 patients some comparison with the results of operation was possible. Of these 17 patients, for whom operation could have done nothing, seven were apparently cured. “If this result can be obtained in patients who are unsuitable for operation,” continued Mr. Keynes, “it is reasonable to infer that much better resuits can be obtained where the growth is less advanced. 'This attitude appears to be justified by the fact that in the present series of seven operable patients six are apparently cured. Many years must elapse before these patients can be pronounced truly cured, hut in the meantime the results are sufficiently encouraging to warrant their being put before you.”