Regional lung function after pneumonectomy.

, , 425-431. Regional lung function was studied with xenon-133 in 10 patients with bronchial carcinoma before and again three to six months after pneumonectomy. It was found that ventilation and perfusion were often considerably reduced in the tumour-bearing lung and that the greater part of the cardiac output had apparently been diverted to the unaffected lung before operation. The regional distribution of ventilation and perfusion in the lung remaining after surgery was essentially unchanged from that measured in the same lung preoperatively and no different from the pattern seen in 10 normal volunteers.