Surgery for second lung cancers.

Purpose: To evaluate the outcomes of patients surgically treated for their second primary lung cancer.

Method: In a computerized surgical registry of > 800 consecutive patients treated for primary pulmonary carcinoma since 1980, 37 patients presented with a second lung cancer. These patients were analyzed regarding their original treatment, preoperative evaluation, operative procedures, and long-term follow-up.

Median sternotomy versus thoracotomy to resect primary lung cancer: analysis of 815 cases.

Background: We sought to determine if median sternotomy (MS) is an equivalent incision to thoracotomy (TH) in the treatment of primary pulmonary carcinoma.

Methods: We followed 801 patients undergoing 815 operations for primary lung carcinoma in a computer registry; 447 had MS, 368 had TH.

Results: Both groups were similar in preoperative risk assessment.

Reliability estimates of the Purpose in Life and Seeking Noetic Goals tests with rural and metropolitan-area adolescents.

The Purpose in Life and Seeking Noetic Goals tests were administered to 198 rural Missouri and 659 metropolitan-area Washington high school students and readministered after an 8-week interval. The obtained test-retest and Cronbach alpha coefficients were largely consistent with earlier research using adult clinical samples.

Midline sternotomy for the treatment of primary pulmonary neoplasms.

Twenty-eight of 160 patients operated on for suspected primary pulmonary neoplasms from July 1980 through June 1983 were approached by median sternotomy. Patients who underwent sternotomy had more general risk factors and more severely impaired pulmonary function than those who underwent posterolateral thoracotomy, but the morbidity and postoperative hospital stay were similar in the two groups. The amount of analgesic required for control of postoperative pain in the sternotomy patients was considerably less than that required for the thoracotomy patients.