[Three decades' experience in the treatment of bronchogenic carcinoma by pulmonary resection (author's transl)]

A review of the development of thoracic surgery is followed by a description of the results obtained by us in the surgical treatment of bronchogenic carcinoma from the difficult beginnings in 1947 up to the present day. The diagnostic investigations, indications for operation and the operative risks are discussed on the basis of 1532 pulmonary resections. The subsequent fate of this patients is known to us almost without exception over a period of three decades. Diagrams show the ten-year survival rates. The importance of early diagnosis and the priority of surgical treatment are two basic conclusions which still hold true today.