[Repeated surgery in primary bronchial cancer. Apropos of 18 cases]

Primary lung cancer treated by surgery may re-develop on another site. Eighteen patients were re-operated upon over a 14-year period (1970-1983) in the Thoracic Surgery Unit of Strasbourg (Prof. J. P. Witz) for a second cancerous localization. Complications and post-operative mortality were more frequent with ipsilateral excisions (8 cases) than with contralateral excisions (10 cases); this may be due to the technical difficulties associated with complementary pneumonectomy in a previously affected hemithorax. The diagnosis, usually obtained by radiography of the chest, resulted from regular, long-term surveillance of patients operated upon for lung cancer. In spite of the small number of cases in this series (1.5% of excisions for lung cancer during that period), there is no doubt that to re-operate patients with a new localization of cancer is the best therapeutic solution.