Congenital Diseases of the Lungs

Abstract

Since radiography was first applied to diseases of the lungs, radiologists have proceeded along certain well-defined lines, evolved partly from clinical and partly from pathological foundations. Clinicians based their ideas of living pathology exclusively on inspection, percussion, auscultation, and symptomatology. The accuracy of conclusions founded on a basis of pure clinical examination was always problematical, nor could such conclusions be verified at autopsy because the gross changes which always take place a few weeks before death were an insuperable obstacle to the correlation of clinical findings and living pathology. A great gap existed, and this has been bridged by radiology. Radiology is the study of living pathology. Applied to diseases of the lungs it has yielded information of the utmost importance. Quite apart from its value in early diagnosis, it has altered considerably our ideas on the mode of dissemination of the common pulmonary infections. We are still only on the fringe of chest radiology, and one of the most important lines of advance is the X-ray diagnosis of congenital diseases of the lungs. Congenital lesions of the heart lend themselves readily to investigation by the usual clinical methods; their frequency, and the signs and symptoms produced by them are discussed in every text-book of medicine. Congenital lesions of the lungs are at least equally frequent, but they find no place in the text-books, because they cannot be diagnosed by the usual clinical methods.