Abstract
The authors studied regional pulmonary function after treatment with bronchial plastic surgery for bronchial lesion from bronchial tuberculosis and with irradiation for bronchial lesion from carcinoma using positron emission tomography and Tc-MAA.
Six patients with bronchial tuberculosis and 6 with bronchogenic carcinoma were exmined. Two of the 6 bronchial tuberculosis patients were examined before and after surgery. In all 6 patients with bronchial tuberculosis, ventilation and alveolar volume were recovered with improvement of bronchial lesion. In 2 patients examined before and after surgery, lung function of the normal disease-free side became worse after surgery. This phenomenon was explained by the fact that the compensated pulmonary function of contra lateral lung due to decreased function of the diseased side returned to normal function with improvement of the diseased lung.
On the other hand, the regional pulmonary function did not improve in 2 patients with main bronchial lesion from bronchogenic carcinoma, even if atelectasis of the diseased lung was improved by irradiation. However, the regional pulmonary function was improved with the recovery of bronchial obstruction in lobar atelectasis by carcinoma.
The difference of the results depended on whether pulmonary blood flow disturbance existed or not. If pulmonary blood flow disturbance was severe, ventilatory function was not recovered due to the mechanism of maintaining the ventilation-perfusion equilibrium.
