Radio-active Substances: Their Therapeutic Uses and Applications

Abstract

CANCER of the stomach is the commonest form of malignancy, for although it affects men more frequently than women, both sexes are prone to suffer from it, and while its victims are usually of the expected “cancer age,” that is, in the fifth and sixth decades especially, many cases are on record where young persons, and even children, have succumbed to it. The literature concerning gastric cancer—as might be expected in view of the facts just cited—is so vast that no one person would ever be able to entertain a reasonable hope of reading it all, and seemingly every possible means of treatment has been exhaustively discussed. Yet when we attempt to review that part of it which pertains to radium therapy, we discover with considerable surprise that almost nothing has ever been written about it, and it is only by the most diligent search that we can even unearth a few references to the application of this element to cancer in the stomach, occurring in general articles on the subject of radium therapy. The reason for this, however, is simple enough. Cancer of the stomach, at present regarded as one of the most favorable neoplasms to submit to surgery, when seen before the disease is far advanced, is probably the most difficult and inaccessible to radium treatment. No doubt because of its prevalence, and the great anxiety of patients and their friends, repeated attempts to apply radium to gastric carcinoma have been made, but it is reasonable to suppose that so few of them have ever been even partially successful that those who made them saw no good in parading their failure and disappointment before the world. Be this as it may, the fact remains that to-day, when one seeks to compare the present methods of application with those employed in the earlier phases of radium therapy, he has great difficulty in even forming an idea of what these methods were, and therefore is more or less at a loss to find out why they failed, so meager is the evidence both for and against the use of radium in combating this particular lesion. The vast improvement made in roentgenologic diagnosis of alimentary tract diseases, especially malignancy, has served during the past fifteen years to make surgery of the stomach far safer and more satisfactory than ever before. Three-quarters of the cancerous lesions found there are located at the pyloric end, and it is universally admitted that, given sufficiently early recognition, a cancer at the pylorus may in a large percentage of cases be completely removed by excision.