[Resection of pulmonary metastases (author's transl)]

The authors report on a personal series of 27 patients with pulmonary metastases; seventeen were operated, 3 for cure. Nine hundred and eighty six operated cases from the litterature are then analysed yielding the following notions. Where the primary tumor is controlled at the time of metastatic resection, when there is no systemic or mediastinal dissemination, and when the growth of metastases was slow, these secondary resection of lung metastases were followed by a 16 to 63% 5- year survival rate. The authors conclude it is necessary to control the hypothesis that 5 to 10% of operated cancers present a second operative indication for cure: slow growing metastases limited to the lungs.