Usefulness of cytobrush for microbiological and cytological evaluation of the mare's endometrium

Abstract

A material of about 6,000 cases of pulmonary tuberculosis (including acute pleurisy) and 691 cases of non-tuberculous pulmonary diseases was investigated in respect to serum titres (the antistreptolysin titre regarding beta-haemolytic streptococci and the antistaphylolysin titre for yellow staphylococci). Elevation of these titres occurred to a great extent among the tuberculosis cases (least among those probably healed). In the group of non-tuberculous disease of the lung the asthma and carcinoma cases show comparatively low incidence of titre rises. The titre elevation should be regarded as indicating an active infection by the respective bacteria, but beyond this even other, non-specific pathogens are certainly active to the same or a still greater extent. Particularly as regards the tuberculosis cases such multiple or supervening infections on the whole should not be deemed “secondary infections.” As a rule the incidence of titre elevations is highest in recent cases without marked pulmonary processes, and on the whole titre rises are nearly equally common whether the pulmonary lesions be minimal or very marked.Cases with signs of bronchostenosis both in tuberculosis and in the groups of non-tuberculous pulmonary diseases exhibit roughly fifty per cent higher incidence rates or raised antistreptolysin titres, and a similar, though somewhat lower difference is noted also as regards the antistaphylolysin titre when the stenosis cases are compared to such instances where no symptom of bronchial obstruction had been recorded. The results of post-mortem bacteriological studies, inter alia, support the opinion that the non-specific infections are lodging specially in the lymph nodes of the respiratory system.The cause of perforation processes or other types of encroachment of the process from the lymph nodes on to the bronchi, which subsequently may give rise to stenosing processes, is above all a clash within the node between a tuberculous process and one or several non-specific infections. Non-specific infections may frequently, not least in cases of primary tuberculosis, concur with or be older than the tuberculosis process.Chronic and acute non-specific infections may exert influence also in other ways, and such infections should be regarded as chief pathogenetic factors altogether in tuberculosis cases, and hence also as of considerable prognostical importance.As examples of acute pulmonary conditions, similar in type, where active tuberculosis is certainly absent, are adduced six typical cases including one of the so-called middle-lobe syndrome.