Exposure To Asbestos Dust And Diffuse Pleural Mesotheliomas

Our plain-English summary of Exposure To Asbestos Dust And Diffuse Pleural Mesotheliomas, by W.T.E. Mccaughey, O.L. Wade, P.C. Elmes (1962).

The study

• Authors: W.T.E. Mccaughey, O.L. Wade, P.C. Elmes
• Published: British Medical Journal 2:1397, November 24 (1962)
• Type of article: Letter
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library, J-M no. 001583. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This is a letter to the British Medical Journal from three authors at the Queen's University of Belfast, replying to an earlier letter by Smither and colleagues on diffuse pleural mesothelioma and asbestos dust. One of the authors had earlier described 11 diffuse pleural mesotheliomas collected from the necropsy files of the Institute of Pathology, Queen's University, Belfast. Four further cases had accumulated since then, making 15. The authors found asbestos bodies in lung sections from 12 of the 15. Only one case had plentiful bodies; in the rest they were few. Nine patients with asbestos bodies had died since 1950, and relatives were asked about their jobs. Four had a clear-cut history of intermittent asbestos exposure. For the other five, relatives reported no definite exposure, but all had shipyard jobs, such as plumbing and furnace repairing, which the authors said brought intermittent contact with asbestos work. A recently seen patient had been an engine-room fitter dismantling asbestos-insulated machinery. The authors noted that in most cases exposure was not continuous or prolonged.

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: Letter to the editor (correspondence) summarizing a series of cases, plus one recently diagnosed living patient
• Who was studied: 15 cases of diffuse pleural mesothelioma. Eleven were collected from the necropsy files of the Institute of Pathology, Queen's University, Belfast, and described earlier by one of the authors. Four further cases had accumulated since then; the letter does not state where they came from. Occupational histories were sought for 9 of the 15, who had asbestos bodies and had died since 1950. There was also one patient seen a few weeks before the letter, diagnosed from the clinical picture and biopsy material.
• Exposure: Asbestos exposure, judged from asbestos bodies in lung tissue and from occupational histories given by relatives: work in a factory processing asbestos for the shipyards, shipyard jobs such as plumbing and furnace repairing, and engine-room fitting work on machinery embedded in asbestos insulation. No fiber type is named.
• Main results:
  • Asbestos bodies were found in lung sections from 12 of the 15 cases.
  • In only one case were the asbestos bodies plentiful. In the rest they were few, and finding them usually took a prolonged search.
  • Of the 9 patients with asbestos bodies who had died since 1950, four had a clear-cut history of intermittent asbestos exposure. One of these had worked in a factory processing asbestos for the shipyards.
  • For the other five of the 9, relatives reported no definite exposure. All five had shipyard jobs that the authors said inevitably brought them into intermittent contact with asbestos work.
  • A patient recently diagnosed with diffuse pleural mesothelioma had worked as an engine-room fitter. Each year this person spent periods cleaning down and dismantling machinery embedded in asbestos insulation.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors observed that in most of these cases asbestos exposure was not continuous or prolonged. In some cases there was a considerable gap after the last exposure. The rest of this sentence is lost in the scanned text.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Pleural Mesothelioma, Autopsy, Pathology, Asbestos Bodies, Asbestos Exposure.

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