Tumors

Abstract

The thorax and its contents are prone to a variety of tumors, most of them malignant. These can be metastatic from areas outside the thorax, part of a general malignant condition involving several glands and the lungs, e.g., Hodgkin’s disease, or arise primarily from intrathoracic organs. The most important of these malignant tumors is certainly primary cancer of the bronchus. The incidence of lung cancer is increasing at an alarming rate, and the prognosis is on the whole extremely poor. Early diagnosis and surgical removal offer the only prospect of prolonged survival.