Word: ulcer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Every day, ulcers claim 4,000 new victims; every year, surgeons put about 150,000 ulcer patients on the operating table. There are half a dozen major types of surgery for ulcers, plus a dozen minor variants. Some of them are al most a century old, but physicians and surgeons still cannot concur on which type of operation is the best, or even which is best for any particular patient...
Wanting in Elegance. Nobody knows the root cause of ulcers in the digestive tract, but what happens after the process gets started is fairly clear. Countless cells in the wall of the stomach secrete chemicals, such as gastrin, and hydrochloric acid. These are designed by nature for the digestion of food. But if for any reason-physical or emotional -the stomach cells churn out digestive juices when there is no food for them to work on, they may start digesting a spot on the wall of the stomach itself. The result is a gastric ulcer. More often, the corrosive juices...
...through it, at a temperature around -4° F. After an hour or so, the patient's stomach wall is presumably frozen. This freezing generally cuts down the stomach wall's ability to secrete hydrochloric acid, leaves less acid to spill into the duodenum and inflame any ulcers there. According to first reports by Dr. Wangensteen and Dr. Edward T. Peter, such treatment usually gives the ulcer victim freedom from pain for six months or longer. When it wears off, the freezing can be repeated...
...Ulcers for Old. A few extremists have charged that stomach freezing is so dangerous that it can be lethal; they insist it should be stopped. Less certain about their opposition, other surgeons are nonetheless bothered by a few cases in which freezing has caused the appearance of a new ulcer in the stomach itself-more dangerous than the original ulcer in the duodenum that freezing was supposed to relieve...
...Wangensteen tried hard not to engage in polemics when he rose to answer his critics, but he was in no mood to pull punches. "Admittedly," he said, "the procedure has some risks," but he insisted that they are less than the risks of gastrectomy and similar operations to which ulcer patients might otherwise be subjected. True, even on his own service at the University of Minnesota hospitals, two patients have had perforated gastric ulcers after freezing, and a few have needed transfusions to tide them over temporary bleeding. But all told, 1,200 patients in three carefully planned research projects...