50th Anniversary Perspective on Volume 1: Urschel HC, Paulson DL. Mesotheliomas of the Pleura. Ann Thorac Surg 1965;1:559-73

Our plain-English summary of 50th Anniversary Perspective on Volume 1: Urschel HC, Paulson DL. Mesotheliomas of the Pleura. Ann Thorac Surg 1965;1:559-73, by V.W. Rusch (The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, 2015).

The study

• Author: V.W. Rusch
• Journal: The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
• Published: 2015;100(4):1148-50
• Type of article: Editorial, Historical article
• Cited by: 3 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This 2015 article is a short commentary, not a new study. Written for the journal's 50th anniversary, it looks back at a 1965 paper, "Mesotheliomas of the Pleura," by surgeons Harold C. Urschel Jr and Donald L. Paulson, and gives brief biographies of both. According to the author, the 1965 paper described the clinical and pathologic features of 28 cases of pleural mesothelioma and reflected how little was known about the disease then. The author notes that the 1965 paper discussed still-conflicting theories of how the disease arises. The link between malignant pleural mesothelioma and prior asbestos exposure was not widely accepted until more than a decade later. The author points out three things about the 1965 paper. A tumor it pictured as a solitary mesothelioma would likely now be called a benign solitary tumor of the pleura. Its text stated that no therapy gave consistent benefit. Its survival figures remain relatively accurate. The author concluded that, given the tools of the early 1960s, the paper was a thoughtful attempt to make sense of sparse information. The commentary reports no new patient data.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Commentary (anniversary perspective) on a 1965 journal article, with biographies of its two authors; not an original study
• Who was studied: No patients were studied in this commentary. It describes the 1965 paper, which covered 28 cases of pleural mesothelioma.
• Exposure: Not studied. The commentary notes that the link between malignant pleural mesothelioma and prior asbestos exposure was not widely accepted until more than a decade after the 1965 paper.
• Main results:
  • The author states that at the time of the 1965 paper, few special stains were available to support a diagnosis of malignant pleural mesothelioma.
  • The author states that a tumor labeled in the 1965 paper as a solitary interlobar mesothelioma likely shows what would now be called a solitary tumor of the pleura, a benign entity.
  • The author quotes the 1965 paper as stating that no therapy then in use gave consistently beneficial effects.
  • The author states that the survival times reported in the 1965 paper for malignant and benign cases are still relatively accurate.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that, given the tools available in the early 1960s, the Urschel and Paulson paper was a thoughtful attempt to untangle sparse information about a difficult problem.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Mesothelioma.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Mesothelioma, Pleura.

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