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The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Vol 85, 815-820, Copyright © 1983 by The American Association for Thoracic Surgery and The Western Thoracic Surgical Association

ARTICLES

Role of thoracotomy in pulmonary metastases from gestational choriocarcinoma

K Saitoh, K Harada, H Nakayama, A Terauchi, T Nagano and K Inoue

Choriocarcinoma responds well to chemotherapy, and its growth can be monitored by measuring human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) as a tumor marker. Thoracotomy was carried out in six patients with the disease because their pulmonary nodules persisted after repeated courses of chemotherapy over a 4 month period. They were followed up for a long period. These observations suggest that the most important role of thoracotomy is for diagnostic purposes; it is used for therapeutic purposes only when the pulmonary lesion is the only remaining source of increased HCG excretion. Much attention must be paid to tertiary hematogeneous metastases caused by resection of pulmonary foci that are unresponsive to chemotherapy.

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				G. A. Patterson Clinical-pathologic conference in general thoracic surgery: metastatic placental site trophoblastic tumor J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg., March 1, 2004; 127(3): 885 - 890. [Full Text] [PDF]