[Association of active pulmonary tuberculosis and pulmonary neoplasms]

Six cases are presented (out of a total of 11) with sputum positive pulmonary tuberculosis associated with bronchopulmonary carcinoma. The carcinoma developed during the evolution of 9 cases of active tuberculosis that had received a long discontinous treatment with tuberculostatic drugs. Only two of the 11 patients could be operated because the other 9 were hospitalized in the terminal stage of the disease, with invasive tumors. These had neither been suspected nor investigated for neoplasia. The use of all available means of investigation in the early stages of cancer can be of considerable help in the early detection of this disease and may allow for the application of surgical methods. Exploratory thoracotomy, together with extemporaneous histological investigation, are much more useful for the diagnosis than the expectative attitudes, which lead to theloss of the patient. Positive sputum should not eliminate the possibility of the association of tuberculosis with cancer.