The primary mortality of simple oöphorectomy, or oöphorectomy combined with hysterectomy for primary cancer of the Fallopian tube, is about 5%, and this is low in comparison with abdominal hysterectomy for cancer of the cervix; it is due to the fact that tubal cancer does not so readily become septic (Doran).
References
Doran, A. A table of over fifty complete cases of Primary Cancer of the Fallopian Tube. Journal of Obst. and Gyn. of the British Empire, 1904, vi. 285.
Bland-Sutton, J. Tumours Innocent and Malignant, 4th Ed., 1906, 400.
—— On Cancer of the Ovary, Brit. Med. Journal, 1908, i. 5.
CHAPTER IV
OPERATIONS FOR EXTRA-UTERINE GESTATION
The systematic surgical treatment of extra-uterine gestation we owe to the genius of Lawson Tait. His first operation for this condition was performed in 1883. Tait wrote that he conceived and carried out this operation in obedience to the canon of surgery relating to the arrest of hæmorrhage, and which is valid in other regions of the body.
Many surgeons (even a butcher) had removed living, dead, and putrescent extra-uterine fœtuses from the abdomen of living women, but Tait was the first to attempt the operation in those early stages of tubal gestation in which the tube bursts, or expels (tubal abortion) the products of conception through the cœlomic ostium or a rent in the gestation-sac, into the abdominal cavity, accompanied by an escape of blood so abundant that it may destroy life in a few hours.
Indications. The operative treatment of extra-uterine gestation depends mainly on the stage at which it is required.