Major Hemoptysis: A Presenting Symptom in Two Interesting Cases

FEW manifestations of disease are more alarming to the patient and more challenging to the physician than is massive hemoptysis. The precise location of the bleeding site is often a problem and it can be even more difficult to establish the nature of a lesion with sufficient accuracy to permit definitive therapy. It is the purpose of this report to describe two patients with intractable hemoptyses in whom major surgery, undertaken for diagnosis, proved also to be curative. Report of Cases Case 1. —Patient R. M., a Caucasian man, was 44 years old when first seen in 1948. He was an architect who had always been well, and who gave no history of having aspirated a foreign body, or having had a respiratory infection in the recent past. He began to cough up large quantities of blood, apparently spontaneously, and this led to his admission to The Johns Hopkins Hospital