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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2008;136:610
© 2008 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Invited Commentary

Discussion

Dr. W.R. Smythe (Temple, Texas): Drs. Wright and Jones, members, and guests:

Thanks for the opportunity to discuss this paper.

Pierre Denoix was a French pathologist who did the initial work on the TNM staging system in the early 1940s. He was at the National Institute of Hygiene there. What you may not know, actually, is that not only do we have New York to thank for this group and all of their contributions to thoracic surgery, but we also have New York to thank for the TNM staging system in general, as the National Institute of Hygiene was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation of New York, allowing

Dr. Denoix to do his work.

It seems amazing to me that we have resisted for such a long time the notion that mesothelioma is any different from any other tumor. There are idiosyncrasies of this disease, but certainly tumor extent, histologic type, and nodal status are just as important as they are for breast cancer and for lung cancer, and that really shouldn't come as a surprise to us.

This work is really a . . . [Full Text of this Article]