In operating for the removal of a gravid tube in the early weeks, the
surgeon may be exercised in his mind in regard to the opposite tube, for
a careful study of the literature of this subject clearly shows that the
patient is liable to conceive in the opposite tube, and in some
instances this has happened within a few weeks of the removal of its
fellow. The liability of a repeated tubal pregnancy may be fixed at 5
per cent. Moreover, in operating for tubal pregnancy, the opposite tube
should be carefully examined, because both tubes may be gravid, though,
as a rule, the pregnancies are of different dates. To spare a woman a
recurrence of tubal pregnancy it has been urged that the surgeon should
remove the opposite tube, but men of ripe experience and judgment are
averse to such a proceeding, for it is an established fact that uterine
pregnancy is not uncommon after unilateral tubal gestation. My own
experience is in harmony with this. In some cases of unilateral tubal
abortion the operator has cleared out the tubal mole and clot, and left
the tube. This is not good practice: I think a tube which has once been
pregnant should be removed. If the opposite tube is obviously diseased,
and this happens in a small proportion of patients, it should be
removed.
The method of dealing with the sac of an extra-uterine gestation after
the fifth month depends in a great measure upon whether the fœtus is
alive or dead. The gestation-sac after this date consists usually of the
expanded tube closely incorporated with the tissues of the broad
ligament, which may be thick in some parts and very thin in others. To
the walls of the sac, coils of the intestine, and particularly the
rectum, adhere. Experience decides that the safest plan, after exposing
the gestation-sac through an abdominal incision, is to cut into it and
remove the fœtus and placenta. When the fœtus is dead there will be
little trouble from the placenta. The edges of the incision are stitched
to the margin of the abdominal wound and drained.
In those rare cases where the amnion erodes the tube and invades the
belly (ventral pregnancy), the gestation-sac, with its contents, has
been successfully removed by merely transfixing its base with silk
ligatures.
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