Hydatid disease of the lungs / by J. Davies Thomas.

  • Thomas, J. Davies (John Davies), 1844-1893.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hydatid disease of the lungs / by J. Davies Thomas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    16/106 (page 8)
    It would be an extremely unprofitable and futile task to discuss, as some writers have done, the exact element of the lung in which the resting embryo commences its new mode of existence, especially as the point is one of no practical significance. But what is of far more interest and importance, is the occasional occurrence of hydatid cysts of considerable size in the interior of the blood vessels themselves, and they have been found both in the pulmonary artery and in the vein. HYDATIDS IN THE INTERIOR OF THE PULMONARY ARTERY AND ITS BRANCHES. They have been met with anywhere from the arterial orifice in the right ventricle to the more remote branches inside the lung. For example—Broderibb* has recorded the case of a lady in whom the right ventricle was so largely occupied by an hydatid cyst, as to cause fatal inter- ference with the passage of blood into the pulmonary artery. Death took place three hours after the onset of a sudden severe attack of dyspnoea and cardial oppression. In this case, however, the hydatid can scarcely be regarded as being inside the pulmonary artery. However, I have from various sources collected and tabulated eleven cases, where hydatids or parts of hydatids actually occupied the interior of this artery or its branches. Five of these occurred in females, six in males. The youngest patient was a boy, aged 10 ; the eldest, a man, aged 47. As the most important facts connected with these cases are recorded in the table, it will not be necessary for me to refer at length to them. However, it is interesting to note that in eight out of the eleven cases, there were present hydatids on the right side of the heart. In case No. 8 I have not been able as yet to peruse the original record, and the reference to the case in Virchow and Hirsch’s Jahresbericht is a very brief one. In case No. 9, no heart hydatid was found, although several cysts were found in the abdomen, one of which, a liver cyst, had ruptured into the pericardium. Case No. 10 is an example of the rare multilocular variety of echinococcus. In all the remaining cases there were hydatids in the right side of the heart. Once in the right auricle, six times connected with the right ventricle, and once connected with both right auricle and ventricle. In these cases it was either certain or highly probable, that either recently or more remotely the heart hydatid bad ruptured or become detached, and that the hydatids found in the pulmonary artery were really embolic in their origin. This was plainly the case in No. 6. In some instances the pulmonary circulation was so impeded by the * Lancet, 1837-38, p. 625. Cited also by Davaine and Hearn.