Good clinical results in the treatment of surgical diseases of the chest are strikingly dependent on meticulous attention to the many details of preoperative preparation and postoperative care of the patient. Countless patients have failed to recover their health or have died after technically perfect thoracic operations solely because the surgeons failed to apply with intelligent understanding those preoperative and postoperative measures that are based on a thorough familiarity with thoracic physiology and pathology and with the behavior of diseases of the chest.
DIAGNOSTIC AND OBSERVATION PERIOD
As the effect of surgical therapy is intimately linked with the individualistic behavior of many thoracic diseases, the decision as to which patients should be treated surgically, the choice of the most suitable operation and the surgical management of the patient require of the internist or surgeon a deep knowledge of both the medical and the surgical aspects of thoracic disease and the