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Preoperative arterial embolization is used in pulmonary disease to reduce intraoperative blood loss resulting from exposure of extensive adherent pleura due to repeated inflammation. Between January 1996 and February 2001, 5 patients underwent surgery with this procedure. Underlying diseases were 3 cases of aspergilloma and 1 each of chronic expanding hematoma and lung cancer. All embolization was permanent, involving coil insertion. Surgical treatment was successful in all 5 patients without mortality. Such preoperative management proved useful in reducing intraoperative blood loss in hypervascular collateral feeding vessels in the area of resection or decortication.

Pulmonary amyloidoma is a rare disease which is usually found incidentally on chest radiographs in asymptomatic, elderly people. Amyloid nodules may be solitary or much more commonly multiple. There have been many reports of radiological findings of pulmonary amyloidosis; however, those have not been characteristic. We report the findings on CT and MRI of a proven primary pulmonary amyloidoma in an asymptomatic 76-year-old woman. The low intensity of the lesion on T2-weighted images may be useful in the differential diagnosis from bronchogenic carcinoma.

A felt-like bioabsorbable prosthesis (Polyglycolic Acid (PGA) pledget and sheet; Medifit feft) was used for pulmonary fistula in a total of 10 patients. "Fibrin glue A" was absorbed into the PGA prosthesis previously. And next, the part of pulmonary fistula was coated with "Fibrin glue B", and then covered with the fibrin-absorbed PGA prosthesis. The prosthesis adhered to the diseased part of pulmonary pleura immediately, and therefore, in all these 10 patients, the post-operative air-leakage was stopped up to 4 days and neither side effect nor complication was observed.

The purpose of this study was to scrutinize morphological characteristics of thin-section CT of the histopathological subtypes of adenocarcinoma of the lung. The subjects consisted of 83 patients with 87 adenocarcinomas measuring 3 cm or less in the largest. The tumors were divided into three groups (group I: Noguchi's histological subtypes type A and B tumors, group II: type C tumors, and group III: type D, E, and F tumors). In each group, tumor size, shape (round versus polygonal), presence of air bronchogram, bubble-like areas, coarse spiculation, pleural tag, and ratio of ground glass attenuation (GGA) were evaluated. Most of the group II lesions showed polygonal shape, whereas tumors in other groups were round in shape (P<0.01). Air bronchogram and bubble-like areas of low attenuation was seen more frequently in group II compared with those in group III (P<0.01). GGA areas were largest in group I and smallest in group III (P<0.01). We believe thin-section CT findings reflect the histopathological subtypes of adenocarcinoma of the lung. The presence of air bronchogram and bubble-like areas of low attenuation areas in particular is useful to differentiate replacement growth tumors from non-replacement growth tumors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]