Primary cancer of the Fallopian tube is almost invariably unilateral and
its association with fibroids of the uterus is unusual. It is necessary
for the surgeon to remember that a cancerous Fallopian tube may lead to
complications with an ovarian cyst. Our knowledge of primary cancer of
the Fallopian tube has grown up within the last twenty years, and some
of the recorded cases puzzled the reporters because the disease was
associated with a cyst, sometimes of a large size.
In Fig. 5 I have represented an instructive specimen, which is an
ovarian cyst complicated with primary cancer of the corresponding
Fallopian tube. In this instance the cyst was as big as a cocoa-nut and
multilocular: the ampulla of the tube is stuffed with cancer, but the
ostium is patent and a ‘stream’ of cancerous material has flowed over
the wall of the cyst. In addition, the cancerous material has
infiltrated the wall of the ovarian cyst. The patient recovered from the
operation, but a year later she had an extensive recurrence.
The primary mortality of simple oöphorectomy, or oöphorectomy combined
with hysterectomy for primary cancer of the Fallopian tube, is about 5%,
and this is low in comparison with abdominal hysterectomy for cancer of
the cervix; it is due to the fact that tubal cancer does not so readily
become septic (Doran).
REFERENCES
DORAN, A. A table of over fifty complete cases of Primary Cancer of the
Fallopian Tube. _Journal of Obst. and Gyn. of the British Empire_,
1904, vi. 285.
BLAND-SUTTON, J. Tumours Innocent and Malignant, 4th Ed., 1906, 400.
---- On Cancer of the Ovary, _Brit. Med. Journal_, 1908, i. 5.
CHAPTER IV
OPERATIONS FOR EXTRA-UTERINE GESTATION
The systematic surgical treatment of extra-uterine gestation we owe to
the genius of Lawson Tait. His first operation for this condition was
performed in 1883. Tait wrote that he conceived and carried out this
operation in obedience to the canon of surgery relating to the arrest of
hæmorrhage, and which is valid in other regions of the body.
Many surgeons (even a butcher) had removed living, dead, and putrescent
extra-uterine fœtuses from the abdomen of living women, but Tait was the
first to attempt the operation in those early stages of tubal gestation
in which the tube bursts, or expels (tubal abortion) the products of
conception through the cœlomic ostium or a rent in the gestation-sac,
into the abdominal cavity, accompanied by an escape of blood so abundant
that it may destroy life in a few hours.
=Indications.= The operative treatment of extra-uterine gestation
depends mainly on the stage at which it is required.
When a gravid tube is detected before rupture, the operation is
practically that of oöphorectomy: and is simple and safe.
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