[Heart and pericardial metastases resulting from bronchial carcinoma. Side effects of radiotherapy (author's transl)].

A brief survey of bibliography on heart and pericardial metastases resulting from bronchial carcinoma is followed by a report on our autopsy findings in 110 patients suffering from bronchial carcinoma. In 29 cases, i.e. 26 p.c., heart and pericardial metastases were found. In three cases, only the heart was affected, in 16 cases only the pericardium, and in 10 cases both heart and pericardium were involved. In 27 cases, they were spread by way of the blood and were mostly part of a general formation of hematogenous metastases. In-growth exclusively from primary tumour regions was found only in two cases. In 19 cases, metastases were both hematogenous and grown-in per continuitatem. Anatomicopathologically, 18 patients had a small cell carcinoma, 10 a squamous cell carcinoma, and one showed an adenocarcinoma. While 15, i.e. 14%, of our 110 patients, on whom we performed an autopsy, had died from arrosion bleeding, this was true only in one case in the group of 29 patients with heart and pericardial metastases. Radiation side effects in the form of lung and pericardial fibroses in the patients, who had generally been treated with cobalt 60 gamma rays, were confirmed by autopsy findings only in one third in both cases as compared with the findings by X-ray diagnosis during life. Lung fibroses were found in 16 cases (14%), and pericardial fibroses in 6 cases (5.5%). They were not strictly dependent on the dose.