PULMONARY EMBOLISM EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON EMBOLECTOMY

Pulmonary embolism has been thought as a relatively rare disease in Japan. In the recent reports, however, the rate of increase of this disease is almost similar to that in the United States. We reported already about the experimental studies on pulmonary embolism by our original method and studied the roentgenographic changes in relation to the pathohistological findings. In this paper we will report on the experimental studies on embolectomy in the pulmonary artery, especially on the limitation of the effectiveness of this procedure. A total of 45 dogs were used for this study. The embolectomy and thrombectomy by thoracotomy were performed after 1, 2, 3 and 4 days and 1 week following the insertion of the Laminaria-embolus. During thoracotomy the pressure of the pulmonary artery was measured before and after embolectomy. X-rays of the chest were taken after 1 and 3 days and 1 week following embolectomy and we made pathohistological examinations of the resected lungs. We were not able to find any literature on the limitation of the effectiveness of embolectomy in the pulmonary artery. We suppose from these findings that embolectomy should be done 1 or 2 days after the pulmonary embolism occurs and in the early stage when the changes caused by pulmonary embolism are still reversible.