Intracranial tumours : notes upon a series of two thousand verified cases with surgical-mortality percentges pertaining thereto / by Harvey Cushing.

  • Cushing, Harvey, 1869-1939.
Date:
[1932]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Intracranial tumours : notes upon a series of two thousand verified cases with surgical-mortality percentges pertaining thereto / by Harvey Cushing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    71/172 (page 55)
    complete temporary symptomatic recovery, but a recurrence with fatality took place within a year. Several years ago Professor Forsell of Stockholm, after watching the incomplete extirpation of a malignant glioma, suggested that we try the effect of temporarily implanting in the cavity a ball of proper size con¬ taining a core of radium. Acting on this suggestion we have occasionally buried such a radium “bomb”* for varying periods of time after massive Fig. 46. Showing position of radium bomb in cavity of large incompletely excavated oligo-glioma. extirpations particularly of glioblastomas. This same procedure was em¬ ployed without appreciable benefit on an oligo-glioma in the following in¬ stance: A man 40 years of age (Surgical No. 35810) for a year had oeen conscious of unusual fatiguability associated with headaches and occasional attacks of * The type of bomb” we have used is made up of a central core of radium needles enclosed in a rubber sponge and wrapped in thin rubber tissue, the size corresponding approximately to the size of the cavity left by the removal of a malig¬ nant tumour. The dosage we have customarily employed, viz., four needles each con¬ taining 12| mgm. of radium screened with a one millimetre silver jacket and buried for four days represents approximately 5,000 mgm. hours. The distant effect is shown by the almost instantaneous fogging of an X-ray him held against the dis¬ tant side of the head and also by the subsequent complete depilation of the scalp.